The Dale Jr. Download - 375 - Ricky Craven: My True North

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

It is rare to hear two racecar drivers, stripped of the machismo attitude that comes from being a fierce competitor, talk about their most vulnerable moments. Former NASCAR driver and television analyst Ricky Craven sits down with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mike Davis for one of the most honest conversations between racers you will ever hear. From broken relationships, near tragic crashes, concussions to depression, it's a conversation that sheds light on parts of racing that are not often discussed.Craven cut his teeth on the Short Tracks of New England, following in his father's footsteps as a racer. The introduction to auto racing, as we learn, is one of the only lessons his father offered the young Maine racer. From Chargers. ACT Tour Late Models to the highly competitive Busch North Series, Craven's stock was rising. When opportunity came knocking, Craven jumped on it. His move south, into NASCAR's upper ranks, didn't come without challenges and valuable lessons. Some of those lessons, came from an unexpected source, the legendary Dale Earnhardt Sr.Craven's ascension into the elite NASCAR Cup Series came with some early success. In 1996, he was sixth in the standings when the green flag dropped at the massive Talladega Superspeedway. But it was a red flag at lap 129, caused by a savage crash that saw Craven airborne into the catchfence and flying over five cars, that started his struggles mentally and physically. Craven broke his back in the wreck, but came back to the seat right away.A year later, Craven landed his dream job piloting the Budweiser No. 25 Cup car for one of the best teams in the sport, Hendrick Motorsports. That dream, quickly became a nightmare, as a series of bad accidents led to a serious head injury when Craven crashed during practice at Texas Motor Speedway. Helicoptered to a hospital, the severity of his injuries kept him from the cherished seat he had earned. Eventually, Ricky returned. He fought through the symptoms that lingered after the crash. About a year later, Craven had to take himself out of the racecar, after being diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome. He opens up about how he was feeling and what he was going through at the time.As if a challenging upbringing, a wildly competitive sport, and concussion issues weren't enough, Craven was also dealing with depression. It wasn't until later in life, that the charismatic New Englander figured out, with the help of friend Dale Jr. and his doctor Mickey Collins, what his "true north" was. Craven shares the experiences battling depression and how he finds the inner-peace to make it through.Dale Jr. and Ricky share the commonality of going through serious head trauma. They share their viewpoints on a sport where it was once taboo to admit you are hurt and how it affected their careers and lives.It's a polarizing discussion that you don't want to miss.OPEN SEGMENT During our Open Segment Dale Jr. and Mike talk about the controversial finish at the Circuit of the America's (COTA) and what people should expect out of the young and aggressive Ross Chastain in the future. Dale Jr. also expresses his distain for "Track Limits" in NASCAR. They discuss Denny Hamlin's tweet an the public response to on-track incidents. Dale Jr. explains Reaction vs Reputation. ASKJR Presented by XfinityHannah Newhouse hits Dale Jr. with some interesting questions from our fans and we learn a lot from the answers. Dale Jr. gives us his plan for prepping for his line NASCAR Xfinity Series race of 2022. What does Dale Jr. and Mike Davis think of Will Smith's slap heard around the world? Was it for real? Dale wants a fireball. The candy! Le Mans or No Lemans? Dale also weighs in on Hendrick Motorsports’ participation How the upper ranks of the sport can help Short Track Racing Thoughts on the Foo Fighters after the tragic passing of Taylor Hawkins 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.

This is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey, up to the bank, it was turn number one. Mark spins out of control. The whole pack is involved. Car round and hit again as it comes back to the bottom of the racetrack in the quarter. A savage crash. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again in the Bojangles studio for another episode of the Dell Jr.

Download with my co-host, Mike Davis. We've got Matthew Dillner. And back again. Newhouse. New House. I never know if she's going to be here. It's kind of week to week. Well, after her little Twitter bout with Brett over the weekend, it seems to me like she's

already, she's identifying as a Dale Jr. Download personality and not a door bumper clearing anymore, which is good for you. You've moved up. That's a promotion. Congratulations. Don't look back. So when are we going to make it official? It's official.

It's official. It's official. Really? I love it. Yeah, it's official. All right. I did it. Yeah.

It's official because Hannah and I have talked about doing it. the rest of the year. That makes it official, right? Oh, am I hearing that now? She seems to not know what you're talking about, Mike. Oh, I intended to tell her right. Oh, okay. Yeah. I basically got a, how this started is, I got a phone call that said, hey, are you free the next couple weeks? And then we'll go from there. And we're past the next couple weeks, and I keep getting good tomorrow, you good tomorrow text message. So like, I just keep showing up. Let's do the rest of the year. Cool. Yeah, I'm going here. Let's do the rest of the year. Well, there we go. All right. Now, I can, I can quit worrying about that. That was creating tons of anxiety for me.

Now you can actually call her our first and last name and not just new house. Because see, before you're committed, you're just going to be Newhouse. I mean, that's fine. Yeah, I get it. But now, now that you're in, moving up, I get the first name right. And a new house is here. Appreciate it. She feels a critical role, and we're happy that she's here again.

So looking forward to the show. We got Ricky Craven coming in. He has, you know, he's had a pretty awesome career, started up north, had a lot of success, moved down into NASCAR, in the Cup series, the Xfinity series, had a lot of wrecks that created a lot of injuries and a lot of challenges. And I've talked to him about those a lot, and we've had a lot of conversations, but never, obviously, in this room. So it'll be great to get him in here and tell us about how those affected him. And he also moved out of the race cart and had a really great career as an analyst and working for different networks. And so, you know, we just got to see where he's at, you know, and see what he's up to these days and see how he's moving through life.

You know, it's always a challenge, I think, for a lot of these guys that we talk to that come, you know, that are retired and trying to find their way. And I've learned over the course of discussing it with all these guys is it's never a perfect science, right? It's never a perfect, there's never a perfect plan. And anyways, we're going to hear Ricky's story. I can't wait to get him in here, and I think people are really going to enjoy it. had a lot going on this past week. Obviously, Circuit of Americas, is that right? Am I saying it right?

Circuit of the Americas. Circuits or circuit? Circuit. Yeah, so Cota? Let's go Cota. Cota just sounds so much more natural. Austin. What does Cota stand for?

Circuit of the Americas. Yeah, that's it. You've got it. Circuit of the Ameri. Okay, Cota. All right, yeah, that makes sense now that I'll think about it. So it's just a strange name for a track. You know, we're used to blah blah blah motor speedway or jah jaz speedway or raceway, you know, not circuit of the Americas.

Yeah, usually it would be like the blah blah blah, blah circuit if there was a circuit involved. I guess, yeah. Never leading with the speedway of the Nashville. Very modern, modern take. Anyhow, so what did y'all think about that race? I was I'm trying my hardest to not be

negative Nancy here but you know I don't love all the road courses that we have on the schedule Of course I obviously have mentioned a million times how I wish there were some more short tracks on the schedule and not Phoenix

Not the Coliseum Those don't those don't count And no Dirt Bristol is not a new short track on the schedule sorry. You know, but there's a lot of road courses. Now, I understand that the next-gen car is very road course-worthy.

I mean, it's a car that's purpose-built with the independent rear suspension and all the transaction on everything to get around those road courses really well. And from the driver's perspective, they all have complimented on how much better and more fun this car is at those particular tracks. So going forward, I'm excited to see it at Sears Point, Watkins Glen, all the traditional tracks we go to. I thought it raised pretty well this weekend. I only caught a handful of laps. We were kind of moving around

doing our own thing this weekend, but you know, I don't know. Did you think it was a success? I know that the facility itself is amazing. I mean, first class. Top shelf. Blow you away when you're there personally. But is it good for stock cars?

Well, let's take the overall body of work. I mean, if you take the trucks and the Xfinity The Xfinity race actually was the first time I didn't think the Xfinity race actually held up and held the water that it usually holds on the weekends, right? Usually that's the better race. I mean, can we say that? Yeah. The truck race was pretty good. But the truck race and the cup race, I mean, listen, I got to be honest, I was like you.

I didn't watch all of the race, but I did catch the end. And, I mean, the last lap delivered is that if that's what you define a good race. And I think I do, then yeah. It gave us the last lap. It gave us a race to the finish, and you didn't know who was going to win. Oh, there it is right there on the screen. Yeah, this is a, this is a heck of a race. And by the way, I want to say this.

Ross Chastine, I thought the restarted that. Chastine. Chastine. I think she won a Grammy or something. Jessica Chastine. Not Ross Chastine. He didn't win a Grammy? And by the way, I think it was an Oscar, not a Grammy.

Sorry. I don't want a Grammy. She didn't win a Grammy. back. Ross Chastain won the Grammy. Hey, they're all the same all them more shows. I can't keep up with you.

I think the Grammys is music, right? Yeah. Gramies is music. That's right. Yeah. Three guys duking it out at the end. Man, I mean, like, if that doesn't appeal to you, what does?

I mean, I guess, I guess I like it. Now, I think I know the answer to that. People say, well, if it wasn't a, you know, a traditional race. But I guess I'm satisfied. So, you know, the last lap was incredible. and we're going to get into that a little bit too but one of the things that I'm

one of the things that annoys me is track limits and basically track limits is you know NASCAR has a rule that you can't cut a corner or go too far inside a curb and what has what that did was basically put them in a situation of judgment and basically like kind of like the L-L-Line rule it's interpreted differently by whoever's in the tower managing the event,

which we have three different series at the racetrack. So there's three different race directors that have three different opinions of how that rule is interpreted. Whether it's the yellow line rule or track limits, the way it's called on the truck race versus Xfinity and the cup race will not be the same. It won't be linear. So what's frustrating is, is, you know, you got, you got a, you got a, got a guy that's a fan of X driver and his driver gets black flagged. And then that fan can show you four other instances, maybe even in the same lap,

where all these other drivers did the exact same thing. And maybe in the same picture or the frame, right? Right. It's so frustrating. So track limits, that's frustrating. I don't want to hear about track limits. You watch them come through turn one and go way wide off the corner. completely off of the racing surface into the runoff and then drive a half a mile later and get

black flag for being a foot too far to the right or left of a curb. It's just frustrating. I don't, I don't, I hate sitting there watching a race wondering when my, when, when the driver I'm pulling for might get popped for something silly like that. That's interesting. Yeah, you bring up a good point. It's, the track limits create the opportunity for inconsistency and subjectivity. And, and subjectivity. and the things that you actually ultimately don't like about our sport when we create those scenarios for debate and inconsistency. Especially, like I say, when you got them running really wide off of one corner

or, you know, we definitely don't want drivers cutting portions of the racetrack, but, you know, I think through the S's and so forth, it's a bit frustrating because you would see certain drivers get penalized. Jeb Burton having a great run at the end of the Xfinity race. gets docked for cutting a corner and there were certain instances of drivers, even junior motor sports drivers being in the same situation that didn't get the same penalty, right? And so that's got to be frustrating if you're a Jeb Burton fan or obviously if you're Jim Burton, that's got to be you work all, you go all the way there, you get in the car,

you work all weekend, you race hard all day, you're sitting there with a top five finish and you're watching other people do the same thing you're doing and you get called on it. But didn't the Chase Briscoe situation at the end of the cup race doesn't that apply to the same situation? I mean, he ended up getting, cutting through, and they actually ruled that he's not going to be penalized. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, inconsistency, that's your point. Yeah. You know, that, that, anyhow, I think that there's a, jury's still out on that race track, being a great place to watch a great race. It's too small of a sample size for us to judge it. I think we need to go back there multiple times before we sort of see a rhythm or a rhyme

to the style of racing that we're going to see there. I think it was pretty incredible there at the end. I hate to really check the big box. Oh, man, it was awesome. It was an awesome race because, well, the last lap was awesome. I try to avoid that. I want to look at the whole body of the event, you know, from start to finish. A lot of people don't like the stage breaks in the road courses.

They want the race to kind of flow straight through. You can still give stage points at certain laps, but they don't like the cautions. I kind of like it because you got guys that will stay out to try to win the stage, and other guys will pit before the stage ends, and then they sort of flip-flop and cycle forward to the, you know, it sort of jumbles guys up, and you've got guys coming and going through the field. So I kind of like that, and it means, like, you know, Denny Hamlin, who stayed out to win stage two, he knew that when the stage was over, he was going to go to the pits, get his tires, and come out and be behind a bunch of guys that pitted before the end of the stage.

While he's excited that, hey, I'm going to get these 10 points and a bonus point for this stage win, boy, I got my work cut out for me in stage three, right? And that's drama, man. That adds some intrigue for me. It directly affected the leader. Probably the best car was Suarez. Yeah. I mean, of the track house cars, Suarez was probably the better.

He went after the stage win. He was the best car, but that put him back in the field, and then he got taken out. Yeah, it's a risk. Yeah. And so I feel like that on the road courses, I'm not quite sure what I want or what I prefer in terms of,

I like how the stage breaks and pitting and so forth, do cycle the field and create strategy and some guys will give up those stage points for the opportunity to be better suited to win the race in stage three or a better track position. So I feel like that I kind of don't want the stages and stick around. Anyways, the last lap, a lot of debate on right or wrong,

and I think that, you know, it's good for us to try to dive into that a little bit. we watched a lot of good hard racing. Mike, me and you were talking earlier, you brought up a great point about Ross Chastain, just being able to get the lead and how you appreciated that on one of those final restarts. I had a tweet crafted. I was so impressed with the way Ross took the lead. Who on that restart thought Ross was going to be able to pass A.J. Almondinger, and who was the other car? Was it Bowman? I think Bowman kind of came in there. Anyways, I don't remember where Chastain started on that last restart, but it was.

was a sick move and it was crystal clean like nobody i can't believe it i thought they for sure were going to put bumpers to each other i thought they were going to mix it up ross took that lead with authority and i was so impressed that i started writing a tweet for when he took the win i'm like totally earned good for ross chastain the dude just went out there and he did it clean and right right as i was having that tweet prepared then all hell broke loose and that's like delete delete delete delete let's go ahead and watch this thing because i didn't even think he was going to win at that point. So I was already impressed with the way Ross, I thought Ross did what he had

to do to get the lead. And that's even before the end of it, right? But we must say that that was set up because of A.J. Almondinger putting the bumper to him first. I didn't think A.J. Almondinger was wrong for what he did. And I didn't think Ross was

wrong in what he did to get the lead back. I have no problems with any of that stuff. Moreover, I would say that if you look at Ross's whole body of work and the context behind his whole career. You're going to tell me, after all he's been through, you go back to that DC solar fiasco, and you go back to the time at Darlington when Harvick, you know, blistered him after that race and all these things. Ross Chastin, that's a hungry

dog out there. You're going to deprive a hungry dog a win? I agree with you. Absolutely not. I totally agree with you. Let me go get it. People are going to rip Mike up and down for calling Ross Chastine. Well, you know, it's not as hard as Di Benedetto, but you know, we all have our isms. say ambulance. I'm just warning you, Mike. You know how sensitive you are in social media feedback. You're going to hear it about this Ross Chastin. Well, I've butchered names way worse than that.

You keep referring to. I agree with you, Mike. So you've got to think about everything that he's been through. And here he is going, you know, he's, he's, uh, Ross is going to drive full time for Ganassi. The team gets sold. That brought in a level of uncertainty for a guy like him. Are they going to want to keep me?

Does this mean I still got a deal? He doesn't know that, even if he's hearing positive things from trackhouse. He doesn't know for sure, right? You never do. He's seen all this before, and he knows how easily things can just fall apart. And so I talked to Ross leading into this year. And he's like, man, I'm not sure how this is going to go. I'm nervous.

He's like, I'm almost, I'm burnt out on sort of, rebuilding my hopes and rebuilding my my confidence in in each season and I was like man this is this is gonna you know I told him something positive that you know to stay the course and he's going to be fine but I'm not sure I even know knew for sure you know what his future held going into this year we certain no one saw track house being this competitive nobody did you know there's people that wanted it to happen but no one was going to start the year and go, oh yeah, track house is going to be up front running for top fives and wins.

Right. So a couple things that I wrote down, taking some notes to prepare for this conversation. So AJ ends up in the gravel. All right. When you're racing hard at the end of the race and there's beating and banging, AJ got into Ross a little bit in one corner, just moved him up out of the way and takes the spot.

the code unwritten code is that now Ross has the green light to do exactly the same thing to AJ but Ross sent AJ into the gravel

all right and instead of AJ finishing second third fifth AJ ended up in the 30s or 20s right he ends up in the gravel and the whole field goes by

so that's no good all right Ross absolutely could get aggressive with him and push him out of the way it would have been completely okay but the man ended up in the gravel

basically like putting him in the fence and he ends up losing two dozen positions that is the only part that I was a little disappointed in but Ross doesn't have any control really over AJ and how

AJ's you know I mean he's shoved him down in the corner wicked hard. I mean, he was like, look, you're going, you're going into this corner way farther than you want to. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that I'm going to win this race, and I really could care less

what happens to you. The other factor, too, that ends up putting AJ in the gravel is Bowman. If Bowman's not there and they don't collide, I think AJ saves the car, makes the corner, and then finishes into top five. But

Bowman and him collide. Maybe it broke some of the steering linkage or whatever in the car of AJ. They hit pretty hard, wheel to wheel. But the collision also contributed into AJ going into the gravel. So I don't put all of that responsibility for AJ losing two dozen positions on the last corner of the race on Ross's lap. Now, Ross absolutely didn't have to send him in there that hard, but he was hell bent to win that race.

And the other thing, too. So, Ross, about four or five years ago, was literally about to go back and work the family business. Leave the sport entirely. All right. And I know we've already mentioned about how he's had deals come together and fall apart. And, you know, his D.C. solar thing looked like a surefire full-time year in the Xfinity series with Gannasi. And he ends up going to colleague.

and, you know, creating an opportunity for himself there. But just a couple years ago, he was all, he was literally, he was literally assuming that his career was over, all right? So the thing about Ross is we've raced him in the Xfinity series, and there are, there are races where, so Ross has, Ross has been a renter in one of our properties. Me and my sister had this business where we've got about 20 rentals in the area. Ross has over the years rented from us, so I've gotten to know him, and I pull for him.

I pull for him to do good. And chatting with him, he's a good guy, right? And he's a hard worker. And he pays his money on time. When we raced against him in the Xfinity series, he did some things. He did some shit to our cars that I wasn't happy about. Really? Yes.

Remember him and Algar beating on each other for a couple weeks and they're wrecking at each other at Watkins Glen? Oh, yeah. So, I mean, there's... I forgot about that. Yeah. So, there, this is another part of the...

This is another layer to the whole thing is you got to understand who Ross is. And this is Ross, this is Ross going forward. And I don't think for, I don't think for, I don't think for every, everybody in the sport, it's an introduction. If you've watched him in the Xfinity series, this is who he is.

This is how he races. He's aggressive. He's aggressive, overly aggressive. You push him, he's going to push you twice. It's not an eye for an eye. It's two eyes. And so he doesn't, he doesn't apologize for it. He's like, hey, I've worked hard for this opportunity.

I've worked hard to be in this position in this corner, and I'm taking it. it's mine and so he said as much after the race so you're not going to teach him a lesson you're not going to you're not going to you're not going to get out you know he's not going to get out of the car after that win and you're not going to go up to ross and say hey man this is what you should have done he ain't listen to that and saying you know he has to look himself in the mirror that ain't going to work he's fine with what he sees in the mirror that's right and he should be yeah And so I think when we see Ross in this position again, we need to know what's coming.

And we need to, you know, Ross is building a reputation, has built a reputation from how he handled all these things throughout his career, whether in the truck or the Xfinity series. And this is Ross. This isn't a guy trying to find his way. This is him. And so he's going to,

You know, if you shove him, he's going to shove you back harder. And he's absolutely going to do whatever it takes to win the race or put himself in victory lane. Every single opportunity he gets, he's going to get out and smash his watermelon and not apologize to anybody. And so now I think he can admit his fault. He's not, you know, he's not beyond being realistic about a situation if he makes a mistake. But I think that, and him and AJ.

got a little past. I don't know that everything at Colleague was so rosy between them two. What race was it? Daytona. Daytona where they all took each other out. Yeah. Right. And so everything you just said about Ross, though, I don't think I have a single problem with it. I don't either. And I know

you're not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying everything you described, I like that in a racer. I do too, but I don't, I didn't love it all the time. Like what I was trying to say is when we raced against the Infinity Series, I mean, there were weeks at a time where I'm like, damn, punt that damn Ross.

Put him in the fence. You know what I mean? And he probably had it coming, right? Yeah. Like, show this boy a lesson. And then he comes, you know, he comes back swinging. And, you know, and then his confrontation with us will go away. And four weeks later or sometime later, you're like, go Ross.

He's almost going to win this race. That's awesome. You know, so it's hot and cold ain't the right word for it. But, you know, he's going to rub your guy the wrong. away one day. Yeah. You know, but if you're a Ross fan, you're going to be, you're going to be entertained. I was reading some comments by Denny Hamlin on social media, and Denny was talking about how,

you know, what happens on the last lap there, it's, I guess it's really who's involved that determines in the public eye whether it was okay or not okay. and while I think it's a I think that's a great point by Denny but what makes all right so I guess I would take that a step further and say well you know how does the public determine what guy gets a pass and what guy doesn't and I would say that it comes down to your reputation as I was saying with Ross like he's built this reputation and you come to expect what we got Sunday when he's put in that position.

You know, and when Dale Earnhardt was racing, you knew it was coming. Right. He had a reputation. He built their reputation. You knew what to expect. He had, he was called the Intimidator, moved people out of the way, and the world didn't explode. Right? Mm-hmm.

Because everybody thought, well, that's how he drives, right? You know, if a guy's got a history of doing this whole things inside or outside the car, if he's perceived to be a jerk, when he goes out there and runs over somebody or gets involved in some kind of situation like that, he's got to expect a certain reaction from public, right, from the grandstands. 100%. If a guy's perceived as a nice guy. Take Kenseth, for example, pretty good guy. Right. Pretty clean record.

Goes out there and intentionally wrecks the 22 at Martinsville. Massive. I mean, we never see that. Hardly ever see a guy go back out on the track, wrecked, laps down, and without question, take out the leader of the race. Right? And he got to pass. I'm going to tell you what I think it is. It's one more, I'll take it a step further.

It's if they're hypocrites about it. Hypocrisy is what you don't have a stomach for. My point is that the reaction to, the reaction by the public to what we saw Sunday is based on that person's past history in and out of the car, who they are, who they are. Like if you're a good guy or a bad guy, you're perceived as a jerk, maybe you're not really a jerk,

but if people think you are, if your persona that you've built by what you say in an interview, the comments you make or the reaction to controversy or the reaction to being involved in anything, all this stuff is your body of work, right? You build this up over the years. And so people are going to, that's what people take into account.

And when you're out there on the racetrack and get in a dust up, people react based off of who they assume you are. right? And their assumptions come off of it. Your dad was never a hypocrite. In other words, your dad could do, he could race aggressively. This is my perception of it. You know your dad better than I do. I'm saying I would watch him and he would do it. And when he'd do it, he didn't apologize for it. But also, when it got done to him, he took it like a man and you knew he was going to reciprocate it down the road. I mean, like, you just knew that he wasn't, but he didn't sit there and whine about it. Whereas, this isn't going to be the best example, but it's the only one in my

mind right now. There was a time when Tony Stewart caused a string of accidents. And then when it happened to him, he called them no talent SOBs and this, that, and the other. And I don't want to use the word wine, but he basically was sitting there questioning people's talents. And so when you condition it out, but then when it happens to you, you sit there and question everybody's talent, that to me is hypocrisy. And the best example now that I think about it comes to, I, To this day, you wrecked Brian Vickers at Vegas. And Brian Vickers did this thing where he gets out of the window. He's sitting there in the infield and he starts doing this at you, like something like this.

I think it was Vegas. It might have been California or something. It was early in the race. You took him out as an accident. And he's sitting there doing this. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, this SOB cleaned all of you guys out at Talladega. And so sitting there with the hands up as if you've done something that he is above him. It would never happen to O'Brien Vickers or Ricky Stenhouse this year questioning, hey, there's no talent, they got out of talent.

Well, how many wrecks has Ricky Stenhouse caused? That to me is the hypocrisy, and I think that fans see through that. If Ross Chastain, the next, he knows, AJ's got one for him, right? Down the road, if he gets cleaned out by AJ at the next road course and AJ wins the race and Ross does his post-race interview, and he says, yeah, the dude just ran out of talent. You know, I don't know. He's going to have to look himself in the mirror, man. I wouldn't race like that.

And we're like, that would be the wrong thing to say. And now Ross had, now people are going to respond accordingly to that. But if Ross goes, hey, I had it coming. I had it coming. He won the race that way. He won a race. Congrats to him. We'll do it again.

Something like that. Then I can stomach it, right? I think that the people that have a problem with Kyle Bush, the people that have a problem with some of these guys, Harvick even. They've all had their moments where, you know, after a race, they're still hot and bothered and they're sitting there and they're calling out, they're questioning talent, they're questioning motives and they're questioning moves, and I wouldn't have done this. And you've all done it.

All of you have done it. Let's just call it. You were the only one that I remember to be like, man, that was fun. Even when you took the bad end of it, you were like, man, we were just out there racing. It was fun. I never remembered you going out there and saying, you know, these no driving SOBs don't don't know what they're doing out here and all that stuff. No, it's just racing.

Why can't we call it that? I thought the end of the code of race was racing. And I think that Ross probably has one coming. And I think he knows it. Yeah, I think, you know, if you're, if the fan base, if you're doing things over a long period of time that continue to fuel the perception of you as a protagonist or a jerk or an asshole, you can't be ever expected to be treated like a hero. Right.

a situation like that. Play the hill. You're not going to get out and have people applauding. Right. They're going to go, there's that asshole. Right. Doing asshole things. Right.

Right. If you're a hill, be the hill. Yeah. Stone Cold Steve Austin can go, he was mean to me today. You know, after, no, look, be who you are. Yeah. Love it. I think the other thing I wanted to add on to what happened on, you know, what happens on the

racetrack and what's good and okay and not okay. and it also matters who's involved or who you're racing. So I was thinking about there's a couple races that I'd love to race again or I'd love to try to do something different in, okay? And one of them is Las Vegas in 1998. I was racing with Jimmy Spencer and he wins a race. I run second. Now I got to him, but I didn't run into him. It's Jimmy Spencer, right?

He's, I wouldn't have hit any, if it had been Terry Labani or any cup guy in front of me, you don't run into the back of him and move him out of the way for the win. And I've always kind of, part of me regrets it, but part of me wouldn't change it. Does that make sense? Yeah. But, and so I think that, you know, not only, I think your reputation, your past reputation plays a big role in how the fans will react to certain things that you get yourself. involved in.

But even if you're right, you know, even if you do something wrong, even if you, even if you're the one that's not in the wrong, even if you're, you're the one that got used up or you're the one that got turned around, you know, fans won't give you the benefit of that because you're, because of what you've been, right? What you, what the person that they perceive you as. But outside of that, like if you go down, you know, you're, I think that what played out on the racetrack Sunday in the last lap, their past history, working together a colleague,

had a role in that. And if it's Jimmy Spencer or someone that, you know, Ross respected in the 16 car, not that he doesn't respect AJ, I'm just saying if it was somebody he looked up to and, you know, somebody, a generation above him,

maybe he doesn't do that, right? Maybe he doesn't do it as bad. Maybe he does, I don't know. You know, I think that plays a big role in it too. So you guys are thinking in the car like, oh, this, you're factoring in who's driving that car on how you race them. Yes. And obviously you're going to have that with teammates, but most of the time, we've seen that some this year, even where teammates don't race each other too clean. But, you know, if it's a person you admire somebody who's been a mentor to you or somebody who you're, maybe somebody your dad raced against or.

whatever, right, that person you're going to look up to. The other part of it, too, is the garage polices itself. Oh, yeah. And NASCAR's never been great at that. Now, NASCAR likes to step in a little bit too often, I think, in these situations, a little bit too publicly, where they should allow the garage to just police itself. if the drivers have a problem with each other they work it out, they even

have a conversation, or they have an argument, or they continue to be jerks to each other throughout the rest the year. All those things are great. They're great for us. I mean, they really are. If we could get a little bit of all that stuff going on every single race, I love it. We need it. Absolutely.

I need to be going, oh man, look, they're back together on the racetrack again and go, hey, I got to watch this. I got to watch these two guys. You know, when two cars have a confrontation and they get around each other on the racetrack again, we used to be glued to that. Yeah. You know? And so allowing the, I think there needs to be plenty of allowing the drivers in the garage to sort of handle their business, right?

I think it's good for NASCAR to talk to them behind closed doors. You got to, you know, if I would get Ross and AJ together in a room and just go, hey, guys, love what you did on last last last. out. I know one of you might not be happy. One of you've won the race. It looked like great racing to us and y'all get physical and just kind of keep it professional. That's all I'm going to ask you to do. I don't think you can do anything more than that. When it gets unprofessional, that's when NASCAR should step in. When it gets silly looking and you start making the sport look bad, that's when I think NASCAR has to get involved. But I was surprised, I was a little bit surprised by how much debate there was about this incident after the race. I saw it as all good

for the sport. The sport needs all of that happening every single week. We don't need guys running each other out of the way on the last corner every week. I'm not asking for that. I couldn't expect that. But we need rivalries and drama and guys that are just a little bit unfriendly with each other. We just talked about it last week with Jeff Bodine. Jeff Bowdoin, while he's talking about that whole feud but with your dad last week, I'm sitting here thinking, why did Bill France have to get in between that? Like, why couldn't that thing have just run its course? Right. What would have been the bad, what would have been so bad about that?

I know the owners were, yeah, what's the answer to that? Well, it had gotten to where it was unprofessional. Okay. So I remember talking to Jeff. I'm like, there were times Jeff when dad would spin you out knowing that he was going to get penalized. and throw away his opportunity to go to Victory Lane that day. I mean, it had become a point to where Wreck and Jeff was the most important part of the day. You bring up a good point, yeah.

Dad couldn't go another lap without making sure that Jeff was spun the hell out, and then he would deal with the repercussions, and he knew they were going to affect his ability to win. That is a problem. He's a hazard to himself at that point, right? Now, that's when they, yeah. Yeah. So another thing we got to touch on real quick is we got a little bit of time. So, Mike, there was the ultimate experience at Vegas, and I've been reading on social media.

You guys are dancing around the idea of doing this again. It's finally coming together or what? We're going to do it at Charlotte May 29th for the Coca-Cola 600. And by the way, I got something for you. Guess who's coming? I just got this confirmed the other day. Jordan Taylor, our M's a buddy. Our video George guy is coming, and he's going to sit in the...

Nice. He's going to sit in the suite and hang with our ticket buyers. I mean, like, just the same thing. And this is what I envision with the ultimate experience. You know, listen, door bumper clear does a fantastic job to be able to talk to those spotters before a race. And they really kind of frame up what to watch, what you're going to be looking for. And it's a beautiful, beautiful, exclusive opportunity there. But also, I said, Jordan, hey, why don't you come up and hang, just hang.

People would love to just, you know, shoot the breeze. with you. And so Jordan's going to be in there. I encourage you. We've got quite a few ticket buyers already, but there's plenty of room. Come buy a ticket. Hang with Jordan. Come watch the DBC guys. It's just a very fun, exclusive. You know, it's a hangout is what it is. And we watch a race. And it's fantastic deal. But I'm pumped about Jordan. Listen, his video George thing that we've started this year is quite popular, you know. It is. Who doesn't love it? It's a funniest thing we got going. Yeah. I mean, I got friends not even racing people texting me going, I need more of this.

Yeah. Every time we put one out. By the way, Jordan won seabring last week. So, dude went out there and waxed him. So we associate ourselves with winners. He's not just a video of Jorts guy. He's a being race car driver, man. That guy is.

He can wheel personality. I'm working a couple MSA races this year, and I'm going to have to approach Jordan in a whole new way now seeing the George's videos. Yeah. We'll do some content at the Ultimate Experience, too, with Jordan. So we're going to have fun. But just a new add-on, a new sweetener for our ultimate experience. Go to DirtymoMod Media.com right now, and you can buy a ticket and join us May 29th, Coca-Cola 600.

All right, so Ricky's here. I'm excited about this, man. Me and him have been in contact for the last, you know, I don't know, several years, a lot here lately. And he's got several things going on in his life that are positive. We have a lot of things in common, too, with their injuries. And I can't wait. I don't know at all.

So I'm excited to get him in here and see how much he'll open up to us. Can't wait. Let's do it. Again back there this time as it go back to turn one. He's into the wall, now trouble in turn number one. Mark spins out of control. The whole pack is involved. Cars tumbling through the air.

All right on the hot hole. Ricky Craven, one of the cars that went up in the air. A lot of damage to that. Ernie Urban. A savage crash in turn one. Several cars involved. What's up? buddy?

What's in the bag? This is so cool. What is this? So he shared this with me. He's got a budget for Earnhardt Racing Team for 40 races. This is plan number two. Track championship at Charlotte and Hickory run Martinsville in the spring and the fall, run Charlotte in the spring in the fall. This is from what year you think?

I was leaning on you for that. Yeah. But it's got to be like. Lake 70s, early 80s? Not early 80s. This is definitely his little sportsman car, his little Nova that he ran, probably 76, 77, or 78. Going for the state championship. How did you get this?

I had a friend bring it in, and I couldn't authenticate it, but the quick view is that it's legitimate. 74. 74. All right. So does the picture associate with the budget? This is the car that he bought from Harry Gant and ran this car in 1974. And so, yes, this may be this proposal. may be for 75, right?

But it's really cool, and I appreciate you bringing that by. Ralph would have just died, right? In 73. Oh, 73. Yeah. So he's making a plan is what he's doing. Yeah. Shopping around. My favorite part is that in the budget, there's a category for your dad's salary,

for Randy's salary, and for Danny's salary. And I just think that really hammers home. the family where this all started yeah yeah yeah yeah it's really cool I appreciate you bringing that I want to know what they made I gotta go find we'll look at it later let's look at it we'll look at it later yeah so Ricky how you been good good me and you've been in conversation communication over the last couple years so I know you're doing well but uh for our for our listeners uh what you've been up to uh I I sold my place in Maine I had most people associate me with Maine and and and I'm here full-time.

Life's good. Yeah. You had a bunch of property up there in Maine. I did. In fact, on a lake or something. Yeah, I, after my injuries in 97, and, you know, so my compass was spinning and, and I'll, I'll relate to my compass a number of times through the show, but I went back to Moosehead to kind of find my true north.

and I looked at several pieces of property, found a favorite, built a log home, and it was always a place to go back and reboot. Yeah. Spend summers. Okay, so it was a vacation home. Yeah, and home to some degree. You know, I didn't live there year round, but, you know, with one of the luxuries of having a plane is you could leave Indianapolis and be in Maine just as easily as being in North Carolina. Yeah.

So is that the part you just sold, or do you still have that? Just sold it recently. I think Matthews got a picture of my what's called burnt jacket. And, you know, the only way to get to me would have been invitation or trespassing. One of the other. And, you know, I think that was one of the rewards of all that is required to be a professional, anything. But it also can contribute to your demise. And part of the reason I sold it was because of that, you know, it was it became.

a self-imposed exile in the last few years. Oh, yeah. My buddy helped me with that. All right, so you, let's step back. What led you to racing? What was your connection to racing initially? So my earliest memories would be sitting in the grandstands with my mom and my sister, Speedway 95, and watching my dad compete in the Bernie Baker number 12 Ford Fair Lane.

one night, and I have a vivid memory of him winning the heat, the semi-feature, which was a really big deal, you know, because there was 35, 40 cars every week in the top division. And to win what they called the Triple Crown, I think I was maybe, that would be like 73 or 4, so I'd be six or seven years old, and that had a profound effect on me. That's carried with me my entire life. I loved the smell. I loved the sound. I loved the excitement. And that became part of my DNA. And I really believe that I made up my mind to become a race car driver then sitting in Bangor, Maine. Yeah. When did you finally get behind the wheel?

So I convinced my dad to buy this Cheval that was in a field that we were drive by every day on the school bus. It had a roll cage, but that's about all it had. and I convinced him to buy, I think he paid $150 for it, and later in life I realized he probably bought it to appease me because every day, me and my buddies would get off the school bus at age 13, 14, and work on that car. So his motivation might have been to keep me out of trouble. But we got the car done, and the deal was if you get the car done, you could race it.

In a couple weeks, the second time we raced it, we won at Unity Raceway. And Bobby Allison was a guest that night. Remember Bobby Allison was the early version of Kyle Bush. He would hop in his piper and fly all over the country on a Saturday night and race. Yeah. And he was at Unity Raceway, and that's what I remember most. Well, two things. I remember starting last, and after I won the race, I had to throw.

trophy and every one of the drivers that I beat came up to me and shook my hand, said, congratulations. And almost every one of them said, if you ever do that to me again, I'm going to wreck your ass. I took a piece of every car I went by. I was just, it took a piece of every one of them. And that got Bobby's attention. He said, man, you were driving that 12 car? And he gave me his Gatorade hat. And God, I wish they still. had it but you know uh for that reason you know that race obviously sticks with me and the irony of that story also was that years later bobby asked me to drive his cup car when i was a ex finity driver a bush driver and um i i wanted to so bad it would bring tears to my eyes but he was a ford

and Chevrolet had groomed Bobby Labonte and myself, and I just, that was a deal breaker. So you were already signed as a Chevy driver then? You couldn't do it. Yeah, I could do it. I think we all know right and wrong, and I could do it, but it would have come at a price. Yeah.

You know, it would. And a guy named Herb Fisiel got wind of it. I never said a word. I had met with Bobby probably three or four times. Herb Fissel, who was responsible for GM Motorsports at the time, he got wind of it, and he asked me to come to Detroit, and he said, Riki, I heard what you did, and you have my word, we'll have you in a cup car in 95. In 95, we put a deal together with Larry Hedrick and Kodiak, Waddell Wilson, my crew chief. It's really funny. You'll love this, because up until that point, I had made no money. right i mean we just we just raced like we all raced and we flew to memphis and we had a really good meeting

larry and i larry hedrick who's like family to me and on the way back he's we're at 30,000 feet and he says there's only one thing left and it's uncomfortable awkward but we got to do it you know we got to come up with an agreement and i was like oh god here we go because the word with larry because he didn't have a lot of success and he was a used car dealer you know great great human being, but he just loved working the deal. And I had in my mind, he was going to offer me $50,000 salary in 20% of the purse. I said, just hold out. You've worked your whole life for this, hold out for at least $75,000 in 30% of the purse. And so he was as uncomfortable as me, and I think it's because he wanted it so bad that both of us benefited from this opportunity. But he said,

I'm going to write on a napkin because I don't want to talk about it. But if you don't like it, crumple it up and throw it away. We'll start over. So he writes down and has taken him a long time. And I think he's scratching it out and lowering the number. And he folds it and he slides it over. And remember, my objective is 75 grand and 30%. And I open it up and it says 250,000 and 50%.

Now inside, I'm doing car wheels, right? I'm going, yes, yes. And I fold it back up and I go, now to hell, let's do it. I remember, so I remember you in the 25 car in the North Series. Okay. Right? But, you know, that was in the very early 90s.

91. A lot of people were talking about you. A lot of the NASCAR Cup and the Bush telecasts and broadcasts were like, look, keep your eye on this guy. Keep your eye on this guy. He's this new guy coming up. He's got what it takes. He could come down here to the south and he could do it.

And that was the belief, right? But you had been running for a long year. Your career was already a decade old at that point almost, right? Yeah, so I started when I was 15, maybe I'm 25 at that point. Yeah. You know, I guess times are different today where these guys are coming in so, so young, right? But you were considered pretty young for that particular point, but you've been racing a long time. You had been racing up north for almost a decade.

at that point when you got in you know you got some success in the north series what was it like not only having the success in the north series the bush north you're beating some pretty awesome drivers up there some guys been doing it a long time but getting that type of recognition should you know that you were being talked about yeah but it was but i was sort of traveling at the speed of light because uh my my first nascar race was 1990 and uh we won a few races finished third in the standings, and I thought, wow, I'm going to get a ring, and I'm going to get it next year. And the next year, we ran 21 Bush Grand National and Bush Grand National South races, north and south of the 21. We won 10. Two of them were very significant. The Oxford 250, which was

Utopia for any main driver, and the Chevy Dealers 250 at the end of the year, what made that significant is that I battled Harry Gann. You remember 91 with Harry Gant. He was everything in both series. I think he won seven or eight races in a row, both series combined. And I had a great door-to-door battle with him in the end. And the next week, I made my cup debut with Dick Moroso, who had lost his son. And I felt like pretty early on, you go back to Bangor, Maine, that, you know, I had in my mind, I always wanted to be a big-time cup driver. You know, my hero was Richard Petty. And I didn't think that was unreasonable. And everybody else, else in my world did. They might snicker or laugh. I'd go to high school on Mondays,

and I would be in the newspaper. They'd say, where are you going with this? I'm going to Charlotte. And I never deviated from that Dale, and that's a tremendous advantage. Being able to make up your mind, it's a tremendous advantage for anybody in life to have that, the capacity to say, that's what I want, and truly believe that it's recognizable. You can achieve it. Midway through In 91, it was very realistic, and I knew the natural selection would be to go to the next series, the Bush Grand National Series. And when I won the championship, I went to the Gatorade Circle of Champions. You know, when you win championships, there's a lot of responsibilities that come with it. And one of those was sitting next to your dad at the Gatorade Circle of Champions.

And I was kind of in awe of sitting next to him. You know, I couldn't believe it. And but I was trying to be professional in signing. And your dad's obviously, he's always picking at people. And he's signing like this and he's talking to you. And I'm trying to keep up with him, but there's no way. He says, why is it damn slow? And he could just sign like this.

And so he came up, he got a nickname for me. And I didn't know it at first, but he says, what are you craving? And I said, I don't know what you mean. He said, Craven. What are you craving? And then he just comes up with his name. I'm not going to tell you the name. It's going to be my book one day.

What, is it inappropriate? It is. I think so. I don't honestly know. Ask Larry McFrundels because years later, 1996, I win the poll position cup race at Martinsville. Your dad comes across the radio and says, you know, there's always an urgency with your dad, right? And he barks over the radio to Larry, somebody on, not Larry, but somebody on the crew. and Larry happened to hear it and said,

go ask Craven blah, blah, blah, blah, what he has for a sway bar. And so crew member comes down and says, Dale wants to know what you got for a sway bar. He says, Carl looks great through the corners, just launching up off the corner. And I said, well, you know, I can't tell you that. And he says, well, tell me why he calls you Craven.

I said, I don't know. I'm asking. But your dad had a, your dad had a, an influence on a lot of people. And he had an influence on me because go back to 1991, I dominate. I guess some really good drivers. You know, I won races in 91 against Jeff Gordon and Bobby Levani and Kenny Wallace and the Burton brothers and on and on and on. But am I ready for the next step?

I mean, you're always a little insecure. I go from that team, my own team, down south to drive the 99 car. and when I get there, I discover they don't own a set of scales. They would jack the back of the car up with a socket. Oh, yeah. Right? Check the stagger. Measure for me, yeah.

And I said, God, what have I gotten into? You know, I had a very small budget, my own little team, but I had a set of scales. And, you know, that was, I lived with it. It was, you know, that was the center of what you operated from. We went to Atlanta to test, and I'm telling you, I am in trouble. Like, I'm going home because, you know, that was the center of what you're operating from. the car was so uncomfortable getting in the corner. And remember, they're on any mile and a half tracks in New England.

Your dad had two cars there the first day, and he didn't show up. Two Bush Grand National cars. Okay. Didn't you show up? And then the next day he showed up, and he came over to say, hi, or we crossed paths. And I said, hey, can you take this thing for a spin? Because, like, I don't think I can do this.

And he said, no, drive one of mine. Two of them, hand on heart. Like, that's your, really? You'd let me drive one of your cars? There's no way I'm going to do it because I don't know if I'm qualified to do it. But he said, I'll come over after lunch. So he came over, a guy named Daryl Bryant was the crew chief. He had some relationship with Daryl.

And he tried to get in the car and he couldn't. And he said, what the hell is this? A training seat? You know, I'm a little skinny runt. And he got him to open up the seat in the true form, Dealer Hart for him. He threw the belts over his shoulders. He barely got him on. Like he released him as much as they would release just to get him on. He backs out and he goes first gear all the way down pit road. Second gear, he goes up on the old Atlanta track. Third gear by the time he's in turn two.

And the dust is flying because he makes a real wide arc. And he's in high gear halfway down to backstretch, V6 engine. And he runs full three. throttle through turns three and four, down the front stretch, through one and two, crap flying. He's right in the middle of the track, and then he backs off. So he makes like one complete lap. He rolls in, and they put the window on it down, and he gets out of the car, and he looks at Daryl as he's walking away and says, tighten this thing up, that kid's going to bust his

ass. And it was, it was priceless because there's nothing I could have done or said. that would have influenced Daryl Bryant the way Dale Earnhardt influenced him with one lap. And this car is undrivable. And, you know, a little moment like that, and you say, all right, you can look back 20, 30 years later and say, where might I have been if I hadn't asked him to do that? Yeah. Why do you think he did that for you?

Well, you both knew the answer to that. your dad was very, very good person. Along with Bill Jr., Bob Bear, who I was extremely close to, your dad was the most pragmatic person that I would, he was along those lines. And he could figure things out. And your dad was a very good person to a lot of people. He just didn't want anybody to know it.

You know, after I broke my back at Talladega, as an example, he sent his plane down to pick my wife and I up. I was in Birmingham Hospital. I didn't know then I was getting on his plane. Our team had already gone to Sears Point. And at that point, I was nine races into my second year in Cup. I was like 99 points out of the league. I was having a phenomenal second year.

After my Talladega wreck, you know, sport kind of goes on. I'm still in the hospital. And so I fly back. Next time I see your dad, I said, hey, I really appreciate that. send me a bill and he says appreciate what and i said sending the plane down down get k and i and he's trying to get out paying the bill and he said no i'm just no i said thank you send me a bill you damn yankees are all the same you're trying to get out of paying your bills he walks away so a month goes by i say

hey you never sent me a bill you're trying to get out of paying it don't you i said no i'm not trying to get out of paying it i feel bad you haven't sent me a bill he said well you ain't getting out of paying it, you're going to pay it. And of course, I never paid the bill. But, you know, it's your dad. He did a lot of good things for a lot of people and just didn't want anybody to know it. Yeah. And I think it's one of the things after we lost Dale, all these stories come out and you say, wow, because it's quite a contrast to the intimidator, isn't it? It is, yeah. I mean, and it rubbed off on a lot of people. Yeah. You know, those kind of gestures, people continue to do them because, you know, somebody shows you. Right. Right.

What kind of gesture, you know, what a gesture like that can do to some, you know, do for somebody. Did you, did you know that growing up? I didn't. No. You know, and I probably wouldn't have ever been that way, you know, had I not heard these stories. Yeah. It influences you, right? It influences you, yeah.

To go in that direction. Yeah, your experiences are what lead you, and then, you know, you make it up as you go. But I see that. Yeah. You come out of the north. With a lot of success and you get into the Xfinity series, you talked about the test and how things kicked off. But I remember you having pretty decent success in the Bush car,

enough to garner attention from cup teams. You're still sort of this prospect, you know, this very, very, you know, a lot of people are still very high on you. I even remember hearing you being compared to guys like Jeff Gordon, and, you know, this is kind of the next hot, hot shoe coming. Were you sitting around a bar at the time when you were? I mean, I was a kid. I was young.

I was driving my first handful of races myself. But I just remember you being thought of or considered as this, you know, the next Jeff Gorman, the next young guy that's going to come in here. You seem to have the most potential. I had three years in the Xfinity series, Bush Grand National Series, rookie of the year, the year that I told you, a very troubling year. There were a number of times during that 1992 year where I really wanted to go home. home.

You know, that's hard. What are some of the difficult times? Just running poorly, right? Like, this is not a very difficult sport when you're running well. And it's a very difficult sport for anybody, anybody, including Jimmy Johnson or Jeff Gordon, when you're running poorly. When you're running well, people come to you for advice. And I got a lot of that in 91.

When you're running poorly, a lot of people come to you to give you advice, even though you and asked for it. And it becomes very confusing. 93, I was second in the standings, and 94 came down to the last few laps of the last race, second again. So statistically, we were legitimate and had rookie of the year in 95, you know, that was probably the most pressure I ever felt. I'm racing against Steve Kinzer, Randy Lejoy, Davy Jones. It was Robert Presley who had taken over the Skull Bandit Ride. I needed that rookie of the year in 95 to legitimize myself. Because I got to tell you, I don't know if all drivers think this way, and I believe they do.

That's what the 15 years of ESPN and Fox did for me is, you know, I got that 20,000-foot viewer. I could really watch how people behaved good and bad times. Drivers are very insecure. They're very vulnerable when they're running poorly and a teammates running very well. right I was teamed with Jeff Gordon for God's sake yeah so was he so were you in Jimmy Johnson yeah yeah so that that that can work for you and it can work against you and then 96 went well enough went very well until I got hurt that Rick and I got together and made a deal so talk about the flipping Talladega now what do you remember from all that

yeah that I had two bad I had two wrecks in my life my 25 years that left a mark and left scar tissue. It was Talladega and Texas a year later. So Taldaug and the 41 car. Yes. And it wasn't as bad as Texas, but it looked much worse. Yeah. Right. Took down a lot of the fence. Took down a lot of fence. So I contributed to Talladega in some way, right? I had gotten off to a great start and battled for wins in my second year. I battled for a win at Rockingham against your dad and Dale Jarrett. A couple weeks later, Bobby Laboney, Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett and I battled the last 80 laps at Darlington for the win. And then won the poll at Martinsville.

Things are maybe going a little better than they should have. And I went to Talladega and broke my back. I woke up on the apron of the racetrack. Steve Peterson, who was in charge of safety. Do you remember that name? Steve Peterson's standing on the hood with his one knee on the hood, and they're cutting the roof off. Now, I woke up to that, and I'm vomiting,

because I was knocked unconscious, so I'm vomiting, and Steve says, are you okay? And I said, no, I got something in my back. So he says, we're going to get you out and just trying to relax, deep breaths, and I was having a hard time catching my breath. It took me a long time to respond to him because I had all the wind knocked out of me.

Now, if you ever played football, you understand that, right? I'd never had the wind knocked out of me like this. I did not have collapsed lungs, but I must have knocked all the air out. I couldn't breathe. And so it took a while to fill my lungs. And 15 minutes later, they're ready to extract me from the car. And he said, Rick, nothing came through the seat. And I said, yes, something's in my back.

And later, after all the MRIs and CAT scans, I had fractured T3, T4 at my back. And it really kind of derailed the rest of my season. The fracture in your back was from the car hitting the ground. without the suspension. Exactly right. It just lands on the roll cage. That's exactly right. It could have been considerably worse.

If you look at the sequence of that wreck, my arm's hanging out the window. Right. I've got asphalt in my elbow. In it. In it. Yeah. So at one point, my arm actually hit the asphalt. The elbow did.

Oh, my gosh. And I come away from that with two compression fractures of T3, T4, concussion. How would you grade the concussion? I think that we, we, we, drivers have more concussions than we acknowledge. And I think that the concussions are predicated on what your history is. In other words, you could have a concussion from a very small impact. There are other drivers who could have a 50G impact and just get up and get in the backup car.

Right. And ultimately, I think that's part of the story with me in 1997 is I had three weeks in a row where I had impacts. And the last one, I woke up in the helicopter. You know, I woke up in the helicopter, or at least that was my first memory. I didn't get diagnosed with a concussion until 2012, and I probably, you know, I don't know how many concussions before then. We didn't go get diagnosed for concussions. I had wrecking 98, flipped the car, Daytona, 98, and my helmet hit the doorktop. It came down on the left front and my head went and hit the door.

It's crazy how hard we worked to move our seats to the left, right? Yeah. It's crazy. I go into the infield care. I get out. I feel fine. I don't feel dizzy. I don't feel anything.

I feel fine. I go through the infield care center, get checked out. I'm disappointed. And then I'm standing there doing an interview right outside the infill care center, and I got real busy. almost fainted. In the moment, I'm like, laugh that off. Yeah, yeah.

Shake it off. Wrung my bell. Boy, I'm a big time racer now. A big part of that would be the culture that we grew up in. But we didn't think, I never in a million years at that moment thought, man, I'm in danger. Or I got to be careful with this, right? I have an injury. I just thought, oh, hit my head, no problem.

I'll be good as new in a couple days. And so there were probably a lot of times when I had a concussion of some degree and didn't even check that box, didn't even record it mentally, right, or didn't even think, oh, I have a concussion. You know, you just went on about your way. Now, I had a big enough one in 2012 that it was, you couldn't ignore it. That's the moment when I started going, I'm going to pay more attention. And then now, you know, from that moment, I could tell you exactly how many I've had.

But before then, I don't know. But I asked, you know, how you would grade that concussion and you say, and we can get into this in a bit. But had you had any experience before that, I guess, with head injuries or any kind of, you know, we've all raced. We've all hit things. So we've all had concussions. Yeah.

And it's really probably the greatest parallel would be a football player. It's a contact sport. And I can think back to 1982, my first year, going off, that. track and hitting something and, you know, sort of having, I call it the anesthesia effect, you know, where if you've ever had surgery, you know, sort of the most puzzling part of surgery is when you're given the anesthesia, but when you wake up from it, right? A lot of times you hear sounds before you actually comprehend where you are. And I would equate to all the concussions I've had to being similar to waking up for

anesthesia. When you reflect on it, you heard noises, you hear things like hearing the helicopter, the prop on the helicopter after Texas. And that sticks with me, that sound. And there are aspects of racing that I never measured, okay? One being risk, ever. And when you get hurt, it changes things dramatically. Really hurt.

Like what? So Talladega, I went back, I came back from that injury and I challenged for the win a few weeks later. I was battling Ernie Irvin at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the Coca-Cola 600. I just walked a lead a number of times. And I felt really on my game. But then I would be hit or miss, hit or miss all through that year. But it wasn't until I went back. That was after Texas.

But it wasn't until I went back to Talladega after the Talladega wreck. You thought about it different. No, I had like a damn panic attack in the car. Like I got in the car, lined up, ready to go, hadn't even thought about what it was going to be like. I get out on the racetrack at 200 miles an hour in practice. Cars lined up three wide in front for four rows, three wide behind for four or five rows, and a car to my left and my right. And I'm going down to back stretch.

and I just had this sort of flashback. Like, I don't remember how I got hurt. I didn't do anything at Talladega to break my back. I just was a victim of circumstance. Yeah. The Talladega circumstances. We all play in that same sample. So when I was out there in the middle of practice, I couldn't get out.

I couldn't lift. I had all these cars behind me. I couldn't go to the left. I couldn't go to the right. And, man, I really struggled. I came in and I didn't even put the window in it down. Didn't take my helmet off. And there's a lot of those types of things.

that we don't ever we never expose that no until we retire yeah because we're vulnerable i wrote about that in my book so i had almost the exact same experience um the 2012 injury came from a crash at talladega there was a big wreck and a test and then four weeks later i crashed at daga and and uh all the gain all the gains i had made with my head came we were gone. And the first one was a blown tire at Kansas, right? And so when I went back to Talladega the next year, they were three wide, you know, 10, 12, 15 laps ago, they're all three wide.

You're in the race. Yeah. I'm like, they're going to wreck. They're going to wreck. And I backed off to like a 2010, 15, 20 car link. I'm by myself, like 10 car links, 20 car links behind this pack of like 15 cars. Yeah. And I'm like, they're going to wreck.

They're going to wreck. Late in the race, too. that they didn't wreck. And they didn't. I've never heard that story. I rolled across the finish line, and I thought to myself, the hell did I just do? Yeah. I have really screwed this over.

You know, and there's no, what can you say? I got out of the car and I went to Steve and the guys, and I was like, damn, I thought they were going to wreck. I'll tell you a real quick story as it relates to that, right? Because going back to the insecurity of being a driver, like, when you had to get out of your car, I know how you felt because every driver who's at the highest level of motorsports has, equity in their whole career. They have equity in that car. They have equity in all the people that work on that car. They take them to lunch, give them bonuses, whatever it takes. The team part of it, right? And seeing somebody else in your car is brutal. It's brutal. So you'll do whatever you have

to to masquerade your way through it until you feel better and you think it's only going to be a few days. Maybe it'd be a few weeks. Something that was really, I just thought of it right now as we're talking, but when I got hurt in Texas, it was really bad. It was worse than I even realized. And the ramifications were years, not months, certainly not weeks. I'm stumbling around after this race in Atlanta, literally stumbling around. And a close friend who was a team manager I had hired for my own businesses, Rick Blackburn. One day, I, I, I kind of ran into the wall in the office. And he goes, you're all right.

And it pissed me off. And I was like, yeah, I'm all right. But I wasn't. I wasn't all right. And that was the Monday after Atlanta where, you know, long story, we don't have enough time, but it led me to Dr. Petty and Dr. Petty sent me to UNC. And all of a sudden I lost complete control.

Dr. said they blew air in my left ear. and they put this machine on my head that measures rapid eye movement, and nothing's going on. They do the right ear, which was the side of the impact of Texas, and I start vomiting, and I'd just fall over. And they said, you've been driving a race car? And I said, yeah, and they said, you're not driving a race car. Like, you're not driving home.

The first person I called was Rick Hendrick. I said, how are we going to go about this? And he said, well, let's, you know, talk to John. and then like we made an announcement and the next day one of the first calls I got was from Ty Norris okay

now he may or may not remember but he calls and said hey Dale want you to come drive the one car because Steve had gotten hurt remember I think you're in Atlanta

Dale wants you come to drive the one car and I said Ty I can't drive anything I bring this up because that was the mentality back in 1997. Nobody got hurt, and if you did, you didn't talk about it. So I'm diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, and I tell the, I have to deal with it because it's out of my hands now. When I went to UNC, I expose myself. Now there's no way back. But the world wasn't ready to hear that a driver

can't drive because you've got post-concussion syndrome. That's only a hockey thing, an NFL thing. There's three times in my life that I experience acute depression, one of which you're aware of, because you help me with it. The first time my mom was just very young, we nearly lost my mom. And I didn't know I had depression, but it had a terrible effect. And the second time was in that period where I'd worked my whole life to be a cup winner. And I'm going to win a cup race. I mean, it's this close and it's gone. And it was a cascading effect of emotions.

But I just thought of it sitting here. You know, Ty says, Dale wants you to come over and want you to drive one car. So are you out of a ride? Well, so maybe I got ahead of myself. But after being diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, I'm not driving. Right. But did you get released out of your contract? No, no, no.

No, I was just out for like three months and ended up being longer than that. I couldn't get back in until I passed certain criteria. And Ty didn't know all that. No, no. No, this is the first day, right? This is after the press announcement. And instead of them thinking that, well, he's legitimately hurt, they're thinking it's sort of masquerading as, you know, the press release comes out. Ricky's been hurt or he's got post-concussion syndrome.

Wally Dallenbach is going to be in the car. so Ty calls because he's like we need a driver we'll call you we'll call call call me can you come do this can you come do this and you're like no I'm like I'm hurt yeah I'm like and he's like what do you mean yeah exactly and you're like did you not see the press conference yeah I mean now today you know it was a different world oh I know the force right and it was a different world even for you it's not incriminating tie that's your point your point is is that nobody thought of it this way no I'm not incriminating tie in fact I think the world a tie. It's that the world that we lived in back then was, you know,

Ricky Rudd, tape your eyes open and go win the Richmond race after the big spill, right? Yeah. At Daytona. Or race with broken ribs. And that was all legitimate because everybody had done it. I mean, I think about the same time, your dad had a broken collarbone. and you wouldn't have gotten him out of the car. Do they do this because of seeing somebody else in the car?

Are they doing this as a, I'm tough? I mean, it's like somebody's sitting in your seat there doing this podcast. You're not going to let anybody sit in that seat. Is that the pervasive feeling? You would, yes. It's a very fair question. And, you know, he knows. You'll appreciate this.

It's sort of an infidelity. Okay. It's like there's no way somebody's going to get, my car. And seeing somebody in your car is a, is just a horrible, horrible feeling. Now, if you get hurt as badly as Dale got hurt or as I got hurt or Jerry Nadu got hurt or Steve Park got hurt, you surrender, which is really what I did, but the world wasn't ready for drivers to surrender because they were hurt. And so then you go back to my personality, which I was galvanized as a kid. and you know you never met my dad

nobody ever saw my dad at the racetrack my dad was always a mystery to me and so I was every time I got in a race car and I don't know if you ever knew this if you ever felt this way I think every driver's different the really good drivers avoid this the emotional part of it

I didn't know any better from the time I got in a race car at age 15 to right before I was hired to drive the tide car from that whole time every time I strapped on a helmet I hated everybody I competed against I just I that's how I that's how I was programmed

like I gotta beat you you're the enemy so I never really got I never really got close to any drivers in racing that was my personality and and so to be on the outside because you smiled a lot I smiled a lot later in life yeah I mean you'd get at you know you see you outside of the car

and you seem approachable friendly even back when you were just kind of coming in I know I think you had a chip on your shoulder you could sense that you definitely were like I'm not going to sacrifice my chance for anybody but you were always approachable friendly smiling people still you know I don't see you

I don't think there's you know two versions of you but you know you and I didn't spend any time together before those injuries and I really you know in to see simplify things. There was life before those injuries and there was life after. And I was dramatically different after. Yeah, I understand that. I got well. People were like, oh, so you're better. Yeah. It's, you're back. Nope. This is point two. This is version two. Right.

From here on out. I'm not, I'll never be that person again, even if I want to be. I'm better. I can function. Everything's there. Everything's working, but I'll never be the same. Yeah. You think about life before, life after. I felt like I lost three or four percent from, you know, I was, I could be blistering fast before my injuries. Afterward, I had to be very calculated. You think about the places I won. You know, I won at Martensville.

I won at Darlington. And both of those places, you know, I saved my best for when it mattered most at the very end. And because that's all I had, that's all I had left. I would say real quick, though, before, because I think it feels. It feels like we've only been talking 10 minutes, but it's probably been 55 minutes, really quick before we run out of time. We got plenty of time. Okay. I have had a remarkable life.

Sure. And most of it predicated on the fact that I locked on to something called auto racing that steered my life. It was a vision, it was a passion, a dream, and I recognized it. The people, the opportunities, all of the things that were created from this thing called NASCAR have just, it's been very, very powerful in my life. And a lot of people would say, well, if you hadn't come back, you still had a good life, right? No.

If I hadn't won a race, I would be a shell of what I am. And only a driver can understand that, like a cup driver. Because to be a cup driver, you have to go through all these different levels. You get to cup and you get really close and you come to the realization you're not going to win. You say, it's crazy. So I'm sitting on my boat in 98, 9, 2000. On Moose Head floating around, the kids are jumping off the back of the boat. And my ex-wife says at the time, she says, you're miserable.

I'm miserable. It's Sunday. they're in Michigan. And like this, and she said, she was reading. And she said, I just read a quote, tough times don't last. Tough people do. She goes, you're as tough as anybody I've ever met. And so that's what I was referring to a moment.

You know, I had, my whole life I was a tough guy, galvanized. I'm like, I'll take on anybody until I got hurt. And when I got hurt, man, like it really, like, I'm not as tough as I think. and I've lost control of my career and there's the emotional component of that that I know you experienced that like I might be, you might even be physically ready to come back

but there's the emotional aspect of it that's far more powerful. I'll give you an example. I was out of the bud car for three and a half months. I said, Rick, I'm ready. that's Daytona why don't we wait a week i said no i'm ready he says okay well the race by the grace of god gets canceled remember they had the forest fires in florida and the july race got canceled you remember 98 and so the first race back was new hampshire we go to new hampshire my home track

jeff gordon's on the pole my teammate he had won three consecutive polls it's logical that he's to pole. I'm one of the last cars out and I lay down a lap. I win the pole and I roll in and Jeff's the first guy. I don't even get to pit road and Jeff's run out and congratulating me and I think for two days I'm going to wear these guys out. I'm going to wear them out. I've been training with Colombo three times a day. I'm eating fish chicken steak and uniforms didn't fit and I'm ready. Start the race and Jeff and I wrestle in the lead. I lead first 20 laps and get it back. 75 laps into a 300-lap race. I'm done.

Done. What part of you done? I had trained in an air-conditioned. I trained at Panther Stadium. Rick was connected with the Richardson's. So I trained with, I had some great trainers and equipment, but the damn place was air-conditioned. And it was a miserably hot day,

and I had prepared myself mentally for the heat. and by lap 75 I'm done I I limp home like 15th 16th yeah I hated myself for that but there's so much more that goes into this then so that three and a half three and a half months span you said this was one of the three times you had depression clinically depressed did you come out of depression in New Hampshire no and if not no how did you get out so This is the part that I enjoy the most, okay? And this is part of how I've graduated to this. And this is, again, this is not me, the early version of me, but this is me, in part because of this guy.

He's just such a great human being. I battled depression three times, acute depression once, as I said, but my mom having cancer. And the second time was going through, you know, being so close professionally and seeing it slip away. And then the third time was when my dad died. I dug and clawed my way out the first two times. First time I was depressed, I was just a kid and I didn't know, had no idea. So one of these times is before your regs.

Yeah. Okay. But this is important. Okay. Because I want to help people, right? Like at the end of the day, you think about all the money we've made and all the great experiences we've had. And you say, all right, what do you give back?

And, you know, there are people out there struggling. They don't need to struggle. You know, Dale did, did me an enormous favor a while back and introducing me to Mickey Collins. And Mickey had a profound effect on helping me what I call find my true north. My true north being a metaphor, right? Everybody should have a true north. Like, who are you? What do you represent?

What do you stand for? The first time I had depression, I just powered through it. I didn't know. I thought I was losing my mind, you know, like my mom's going to die. I'm going to be living with my dad. I don't really care of my dad. And auto racing helped me power through that, you know, working on that car and stuff like that. So this isn't back in the 70s.

Yeah. And then there's, and then the early 80s. Early 80s. And then the second time, you know, was just Moosehead Lake. I mean, really, Moose Head Lake helped me recalibrate. Not just because I'm depressed and I'm sad, but because I needed time for my brain to heal. Like doctors tell you right up front, and I'll never forget this. The first thing that I was told was, look, the brain is still very primitive to us.

We can put your arm in a cast or we can operate on your leg and we can do some amazing things. But the brain is still that way. We've come a long way. So the second time I experienced it, I just powered to it. Third time, my dad dies. As I said early, my dad's always been a bit of a mystery, but I cared deeply about my dad, and so I'm going to, and it was somewhat unexpected, but I had an anxiety attack or a panic attack, and I had had them a few other times.

I had them when I was a kid when my mom was at Dana Farber in Boston, and I had an anxiety attack when I was released from my contract driving the bud car. but I didn't know what they were okay so I just powered through them this was debilitating and I actually I needed to get some help and so

first thing I did was I met with the psychologist and he went through this whole thing of fight and flight and I was like what to I mean I thought I was losing my mind I came here and the only thing I've confirmed is this guy's a quack he's talking about fight and flight

what is that And, but in a deeper sense, it was, yeah, it all pieces together. And so I was prescribed lexapro, 10 milligrams of lexopro, which I would not take. I've never taken anything, I would not take. But I couldn't function. And eventually, I surrendered, took the lexapro, and it was incredible. I mean, it absolutely worked. It had a very, very positive effect.

What years is? 2010, 11. Okay. I had not ever really thought about the first two bouts of depression, but because I didn't know anything about it back then, but then you sort of piece it all together, and it's like, okay, I've sort of unlocked a mystery here. You know, and go back to Moosehead Lake, which I sold recently,

I still had never dealt with the things with my dad. Never had. What are the problems with you, father? I think that there is a responsibility of a dad that goes along with life. And I didn't really get that from my dad. I'm thankful that he introduced me to auto racing because it had an incredible effect, positive effect. but you know there's things like this my grandfather was a sheriff I got my bag see why I brought the bag

I got all kinds of stuff in there by the way my grandfather was a sheriff and he says to me one day I'm 15 16 years old and puts his arm around me and he says gosh I'm proud of you I'm so proud of you he said you you become who you hang around and I've been telling you dad this forever and he chooses to hang around certain people but you're you're around very successful successful people. In fact, people are clamoring to get to you and be a part of what you got going on. He says, keep doing that. So you go back to months ago, four or five months ago, when you introduced me to Mickey, you know, there were still some things that I was dealing with and lost my compass. People say, how are you doing? Well, I'm so, I'm good. People close to me. I'd say,

I'm in the middle of the ocean. 30 foot waves. It's nighttime. That all you got? I love. I lost my damn compass, but I'm fine. It'll be fine because I've been in the storm before. And it wasn't until I got together with Mickey, and he said to, you know, a lot of it's personal, but, you know, he just helped me connect the dots. And January of this year, I made a decision, an executive decision,

that, all right, I'd have enough. Like I had tried a different medication, I had been on Lexorough since my dad died. And I just said, I'm done. I stop everything. I'm not, you know, I take an ambient to sleep and stop taking everything. It took a month and a half or so, clear, you know, to clear my mind. Yeah.

Yeah, to get sort of detox, right? But I share this with people because this is the best that I felt in, well, over 10 years, you know. And you can't always identify what your problem is, you know. can look in the mirror and you can say, I fix this or this or this, but sometimes it's deep-rooted. And I never dealt with my dad with my dad before he died. And when he died, it closed the book. And I could never open it again. Couldn't open it again.

Did he die suddenly? There was no opportunity to be able to make amends. So the quick version of that is that, you know, my dad never said to my sister and I that I remember and I, I love you. You know. Never said I love you. But consequently, I say I love you to my kids. every single time I talk to him. Because of this.

Yeah, and we're not going to take the chance that anything will happen without you know and I love you. And so, you know, that's great. That's good. But the bad is that, you know, you think, you know, I'm as close to my sister as you and Kelly are to one another. My sister and dad didn't talk the last 18 years of his life. You know, I still struggle with that.

But for good reasons, she's justified in that. But back to a greater point is that everybody out there has struggles. And there's times when you can power through them. And then there's times where you need to surrender. And we've talked about that today in different forms. And then there's times where you just got to toughen up and take the bull by the horns. And because you are equipped and you can find your way through it. And I don't want to go too deep into it.

but I lost my compass a while back and I sent a text to three people on a Saturday night and within seconds, Dale calls me, hey man, what are you doing? I said, I'm just hanging out, hanging out with your dad. There's no substitute for that. You know, like there's times where you've got to stop what you're doing and just help somebody.

I'm sorry to say he was one of the people you texted Yeah Okay and then he calls you right back He calls you immediately Yeah he's and it was And it was on a Saturday night And it was relatively late

And But he's a good He's a good human being I've always known that about him I've always known that from afar So why would I Why would I text him? I've always had confidence in him

I think part of it is because we've had a similar path and some of our professional experiences. But this is the first time you've ever heard me say this. But part of it is because I've watched you, like, stand back in the shadow of your dad. And, like, I've heard enough from you say, eh, I couldn't quite figure this out, couldn't quite figure that out. I've never been able to figure my dad out.

And the other thing that's very important to me is that aside from being a really good guy, I spent 15 years as an analyst. I spent 25 years driving race cars. I'm equipped to talk about drivers. That's one hell of a driver right there. I'm telling you one hell of a driver. That's the one thing that that always bugged me about you is that you always got so much attention for being Dale Jr.

But this guy's a hell of a driver. And that was one of the things I wanted to make sure the world knew today because it's the right forum for it. You won 25, 24 or 5, 6 races? Some like that, yeah. 26, I think. Yeah, with the weight of the world on your shoulders at times. And it feels good for me to say that because I don't remember anybody ever saying that,

but my God, if you take a minute and just compare him statistically to all the other people that would be considered pillars of the sport, it's remarkable what you've done. and you're a good guy and a good friend, and I appreciate you. Thanks for saying that. There's times when you get a text from somebody, and you just know that they need somebody to talk to, or you just feel it. Like you've got to, this is an important moment.

You know what I mean? I think that, and that didn't just come out of thin air. Like me and him had conversations even beyond, you know, he texted me because he knew I knew what he was talking about. texting me because he knew I would be somebody he could trust, right? And he could, you know, he could expose himself to and not be ridiculed or or taken advantage of or blown off. I think, you know, had we not connected October of 2021, I would never go in front of the world

and say, look, I took 10 milligrams of Lexopro for seven or eight years. And I'm, and it's okay if you need. antidepressant. You know, it's okay. And it actually probably ought to do it because there's a responsibility, I think, for people that have had tremendous success to pay it forward. And that's one of the things I said to Dale. When he introduced me to Mickey, I said, man, why are you doing this? And he said, because I just need to. It's the right thing to do. And I want to help you. And that's my responsibility back to him. And really to my true. North is to help people, there are a lot of people struggling.

Don't you realize that you were that help to Dale back in 2017 and 16? Don't you remember? The one thing that nobody will ever know until now is that as I was working for ESPN and I was analyzing his situation, I was really trying to defend him without ever exposing that. Oh, so you kind of knew it. Yeah, like don't get back in that car. Just wait. Right.

Just wait. Because the pressure to get back in the car could lead. to another impact which will exaggerate all of this. Instead of being three months to recover, it could be three years. And frankly, at that point in your career, you don't have three years. And, you know, even worse. I mean, there's greater worse than greater risk than a setback. Yeah, I remember you being one of the few people that vouch for what I was going through.

And so I'm going, you know, we're here to talk to you and this is about you, but there are some similarities. in our experience, and this is going to open up some memories for you for sure, but when I was going to the doctor, I looked completely normal. My sister, Mike, Rick, everybody that talked to me, interacted with me, saw nothing different about me, right? But I knew that there was absolutely something wrong. My doctor could examine me, put me through a day's worth of exams and tests, and see all the problems.

He could see it to the T, right? Sure. He could spotlight it and go here is something we've got to work on. But then I'd go back home, and everybody would look at me and go, you look perfectly fine. You know, and I was really helpful to have you on a national television broadcast repeatedly saying this is the right thing for him. This is exactly what he needs to do.

he's where he needs to be he's where he's supposed to be he's taking this time is the right choice where everything else in the world fans, family and co-workers were like

trying to not shove but wanting me to get back right? Wanting that, wanting me to come back wanting me to get well and come back.

You know when I knew that by the way like I knew that like we wouldn't talk about it because there was no reason to. And you sort of wanted to be authentic and just like I, you know, just what you do for people. But I was in Homestead, your last race,

and I came over to see you, and you gave me a bear hug. Like, we made it. And I was taken aback by that. I was like, we made it. Wow. Wow. He's actually been counting.

Like, this is. been a lot more work than I realized because you put the front on and I'm good, I'm good. And, you know, most of the world judges you on your appearance. But they don't realize that you couldn't pass a baseline test. Yeah. They never get exposed to it. It's not documented. And they don't realize that when you're walking through the airport, you know,

you can't read the gate, you know, for your flight because you're walking. and the lines are all, you know, I went through that. Without being specific, I told Doc Punch after I got hurt, I said, look, my eyes are a mess. And he says, what do you mean? I said, I can't focus if the car has a vibration. If it doesn't have a vibration, I'm adequate. But if the car, if it just has a slight vibration or a frequency, the racetracks won't. Yeah.

So I told him that. And then I didn't sleep for like months because I thought, what if he tells somebody that? You know? And that's that burden that I just was referring to 10 minutes ago. Can't get the back in the toothpaste. Yeah. That information's out there. Yeah.

And in a better world, a better way of going about it would have been if you had the resources to say, hey, I can't drive. And I'll prove it. And, you know, but that we, everything evolves. And I think that we are in a much, much better place now. Top of what you just said, Dale and Ricky, fellas, I want to tell you one more little caveat to that, is that not only did Dale, the people that are around him, and this is, I'm ashamed to say this. I'm ashamed to admit it. I've been ashamed of it for a long time, frankly. But we even questioned his motives.

He was sitting here, you know, pleading for help and saying, look, I'm not right. And I remember he would come into office and Dale, whether you remember this or not, you'd be like, hey, man, everything's off balance. Are you seeing this? Are you noticing it? And in my head, I'm thinking, dude, if you just want to not race, just say you don't want to race. Like we literally started questioning whether this is a real thing that he's doing because he feels it physically or if it's just an exit ramp because the pressure around him, everybody wants a Dale and Hart Jr. to race forever. There's businesses tied to it. Rick Hendricks got sponsors tied to it. We've got a lot of things tied to him being in the race car. And frankly, none of us know what it's like to have an Earnhardt not in a race car. Does all of this stuff crumble around us when Earnhardt's are not in a race car?

So you go back to ESPN and I'm on SportsCenter every weekend. And for several weeks, we're just talking about Dale. And that is front and center with me. That is everything you just said was front and center because I walked in those shoes. Except I'm not Dale Jr. Like, I just acknowledge this career because it's still incredible what he accomplished behind a steering wheel with a helmet on. But it's even far more impressive

if you consider the circumstances in which he did it, most of it. If you race compromised, you will be exposed. And there have been so many drivers that have raced compromised and ran terrible, and I'm sure crew chiefs lost their job. I'm sure that the crew members lost their job.

You know, like, that's the real casualty of this, is that Dale, I think, represents sort of the mold now where now you've got to speak up. Let me get back to you and put you in the final few years of your career. You know, let's talk about Darlington, first off, the 2003 win. Every time we go back to Darlington, those highlights are played and celebrated.

That's got to make you feel incredible. I mean, I know that you're even more proud of your Martins didn't win, but you have an iconic moment in this sport. Your name is stamped all over it, and you're the victor of it. You know, Kurt Busch has to watch that and go, damn, so close. Right. If I was scared,

He's had a lot to celebrate and he's got a lot to be proud of. But you know, you do win. You do achieve the goal of being a winning cup driver in splendid fashion at one of the most difficult racetracks. Admittedly, not even your best version of a race car driver. Now, you have the wisdom and the ability to succeed, but you're not a hot lapper. I never was.

I was much less of a hot lapper after I had the injuries. So talk about coming out of that win. Where are you personally in your own thoughts about your progress out of your injuries? You're holding one of the most coveted trophies in the garage from Darlington. Do you think that the sky's the limit? Do you know that the end is near or what's happening in your brain? The short version is I absolutely, you know, I absolutely celebrate the moment and, yeah, maybe my, maybe my runways a little longer than I thought. Right.

And you feed off of that for a while. And it has, there's a residual effect of winning that cannot be substituted with anything else, right? It's just your confidence is sky high and everybody around you is locked on. but the great thing about life is having the opportunity to reflect and everything makes a lot more sense when you take the time to relax and look back and that was you know that was the final moments that was the that was the ninth inning and you know i won you didn't know it then though i didn't know what then but i do 100% believe in karma i think that you know i live in this world of you know my philosophy has always been that if you if you do enough good things like and I equate that to good things being deposits, going to the bank and making deposits. You can eventually make a withdrawal or two. You know, Will Smith, in my opinion, made a withdrawal the other night.

But hopefully he's made enough deposits that he's going to be okay, you know, that he can balance the checkbook. And I can look back at that and say, you know, I did enough good that they said, hey, let's send him out with something to remember. Yeah. You know, because that's the only way I can make sense of it. I remember, you know, the things about that race that are valuable today that weren't valuable in the moment, what was valuable in the moment is that I won at Darlington.

And you know what that means. Yeah. Like, I don't belong on that list. You know, that's David Pearson and Dale Earnhardt. And I'm thankful that I'm on that list. But the things that are important today are that the guys that were in that race, you were in that race. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson Mark Martin

those are tough tough competitors some of the best Rusty Wallace so I'm very proud of that win but can you remind us how that set up like take us back into the last 20 30 laps of that like this is one of the greatest finishes of all time so let me go back a year

a year earlier I won the pole position and I'm going to I wake up that morning think we're going to win this race and Jeff and Steve Park and I were battling too hard. We came up on Stacey Compton to lap him and Steve and I wreck. And I punished myself for a year that was so stupid. I mean, I was racing in the moment.

I was breaking every cardinal rule of competing at Darlington. And the old adage that you compete at Darlington, it's you against the track. And if you have a much better chance if you take that philosophy into the weekend. And for the moment, Steve and I were racing each other. And so a year later,

with the same car, I qualify like 30th. And during Saturday's practice, Scott Miller, who's obviously in a different role, but great, great crew chief and has a great capacity, very knowledgeable. after happy hour he says man we're in trouble and I said no we're all right and he said we are and he

said listen man this car is truly is the tortoise and the hair this car will only go so fast but it'll do that forever and you go to the next day and I only got passed by one car I only remember getting passed by one car except for late in the race when Kurt lifted me and went back by and that was Tony Stewart like five laps into the race. It goes blowing by, you know, three wide. Otherwise, I just kept marching forward all day. And some of the guys that I might not have been able to beat eliminated themselves. Jeff being one of them.

Elliot Sadler was having a fabulous day. Mark Martin, you know, mistakes. And we had a near perfect day. And I remember with 20 laps to go, Scott's saying, you're gaining, you're gaining enough that you're going to catch him, but you need to pick it up a little. And I didn't. The 1996 version of me probably would have burned the tires off and I would erect. So because of all my circumstances, you know, I can say whether it's real or not, because it makes for a great theater, right? I can say, yeah, the smart version of me, I calculated that right down to the last couple hundred feet.

Brilliant. Makes for a great Hollywood ending, doesn't it? But I didn't. And I caught Kurt with probably three laps to go. And I made a move under him. I was side by side going there. I was committed. And I went in, and I expected him to do a crossover,

which your dad perfected at that track. And he didn't. He didn't. So we went in and made contact, and I put him in the wall. And he retaliated and picked the back tires off the ground, and went by. So I said, I got one more show. shot at this and that'll be off of turn four.

But I'll tell you something that's fun, people, this blows away certain people, that people that want to be race car drivers, you know, they say, I could do this. And there's a percentage of them that are going to watch this. And I say, I was always very good at Darlington. And believe it or not, I learned something from a guy named Donnie Allison. Everybody knows Donnie. A lot of people might dismiss him because we saw him later in life, right? And he didn't win a championship.

but Donnie won 10 races, and he was a thinker, and I've always been a deep thinker, sometimes to a fault. Donnie taught me, whether it was by mistake or not, to just open the carburetor, just barely open it, before you even think he can. And that was at Rockingham. And I applied that to Darlington. I also got great tutoring from David Pearson and a van. So I would go into turn three, lift early, but I would touch the time. the gas pedal before the car compressed into turn three, right? You know, like 5%.

Right. Just get it rolling again. And the car would roll up on the right rear, and I'd go up against the wall this far. And I would have throttle barely open all the way through turn three and then start to feed into it through the middle of three and four off. Now go back and watch that clip. Just go back on everybody that has interest, go back and watch it. And I was just killing him in three and four, killing him, like two car lengths. That's the only advantage I had, and I said, I got one more shot at this, and that'll be off of turn four.

It's 2003. You're having some good experience and some races. But then in 0405 and 06, you're kind of winding down. Things, opportunities are going away. I know from as a driver, when you're looking on that timing sheet in practice and you're not where you want to be, none of that can be any fun. That's right. How do you manage the way things occurred? How do you personally?

The end of your career? Yeah, how do you personally? Because I still kind of, I got to choose to run that final year in 2017 in the Cup Series, but I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I was racing, right? There's not a day that doesn't go by. I can't help it. Yeah. No, it's awesome.

that you just, I mean, you help bring this to a conclusion in that, you know, I just shared to the world that I've battled depression. And there's no, there's, there's no way to end a, very few drivers get to choose their retirement. And even those who do choose it, don't get to organize their own retirement party. I mean, there's just so few of them. So that's something that you just simply make up as you go. There's no playbook. You just make it up as you go. I felt in 2000, my career ended at 2005, and I thought, I'm good. I've got enough money. I've got zero debt. I've got two homes.

And if I don't do anything stupid, I'm set for the rest of my life. And I'd go to my office and look at the stock market. And I feel depression coming on. Crazy, right? Got all kinds, I got plenty of money. And kids are healthy. But I don't know what I'm going to do, but I got to do something. Nobody needs me. I don't have a purpose.

I'm not part of the team. Jack Obringer calls me out of the blue. It's a cold call, man. I just wonder if you'd come up and do some television two weeks. If it's good, we'll reward you. If not. This is ESPN? ESPN.

Yeah, Jack was an executive at ESPN and producer and everything. And if not, well, you're out of two weeks. And he goes, hello, hello. I said, yeah. And he says, what do you think? And I said, I'm on my way. And I never looked back. And I realized something about me then that will carry me through the rest of my life

is that I can never retire, ever. And that the vulnerability that I have with depression is, in large part, predicated on not being a member of a team, not building something. And that's just a critical part of my hard wiring. So I am no longer in the sport because of what you just brought out. It was so painful to have your career end before you're really ready. And you don't get to, I would say 95% of the drivers don't get to choose their retirement. That when we were locked down during the pandemic, I made the decision.

All right, I'm retiring from television. Why? Because I got 15 years. I've been productive. I've contributed and I want to feel good about how it ends. Because I didn't feel good about how, and very few drivers do. Was it, was doing TV and being around the sport and communicating the sport okay for you? Did you mind it?

Did you like it? I'm sure you had fun. No, no, I loved it. Look, my years at ESPN, which I believe were 13, were in many ways as enjoyable as auto racing. And they, I loved a culture. I loved the way they treated their employees. But here's what happens in life. There's a guy named John Wildhack, who was in charge of that whole program.

We had a conference call in like 2008 or whatever. It was an emergency conference call. Everybody's on. Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett, Andy Petrie, everybody, all talent. And they say, we've made a decision that we're not going to pursue a new contract with NASCAR. All of a sudden, you hear click, click, click, click. People are like, are you kidding me? And they were pretty heavily invested in the sport.

And so I'm sitting at my desk. I happen to be in Connecticut. And within 20 minutes, a guy comes and puts his hand on my shoulder. And he says, how you doing? And I said, oh, hey, John. I feel like we just, honestly, I feel like I just lost the race. Like, I don't know what to think. And he said, well, it's a tough day and it's going to be a tough week and months to follow.

But, you know, we've got a guy named Barry Melrose, even though we don't cover hockey. We don't carry any hockey games. We have a guy named Barry Melrose. We want you to be Barry Melrose. Awesome. And he gave me a four-year contract, the longest contract I had had in television. And those were the glory days. You enjoyed that.

being the NASCAR guy at ESPN. Because one of the things I discovered about myself, and I've seen it in all other facets of sports or television, the greatest athletes don't make the greatest owners or coaches. Some of the greatest teams are a product of a, you know, Terry Francona, you know, bat 213 in the majors or whatever. I'm making up the numbers. But it's oftentimes,

the player that had the experiences, but didn't have that extraordinary talent of a Michael Jordan. So he was more relatable and he was more applicable, too, because he had to make up for that lack of talent in some ways. And I always sort of viewed myself that way. I was a very good race car driver. I won at NASCAR's top three levels. I won a cup race, too. But I wasn't Dale Earnhardt.

I wasn't Jeff Gordon. I wasn't Tony Stewart or Jimmy Johnson. And I think you've got to know who you are. And ESPN gave me that opportunity. I was better, I thought, I really felt I was better at television in some ways than I was driving. Yeah. Because of it. How did you deal with off seasons?

Like, you know, when you're not an analyst and you're kind of faced with more reality. Well, there was no offseason as a driver. And we know that. maybe two weeks. But so do you mean like now or? Yes. In the last five years. No, I've already been.

I have been 100% transparent because I do not do well in isolation or downtime. I have to be around people. And in my whole adult life, I've either owned something or built something. So it's really been the last couple of years that that's been absent. and I'm working toward that. But I haven't found, you know, if you think about how you and I connected, it is in a large part because the first 50 years of my life, I had a very, very primary objective.

I mean, I was very, you know, I had all kinds of adversity in my life, but I was very focused on one thing that was auto racing, whether it was a driver or an analyst. And then at 50, I sort of lost that. at 50 I had gone through a divorce and I still had you know I was still in a very comfortable position but I chose to I guess you could call it a self-imposed exile of moose head lake so you you go through a divorce and you move you went to Maine and sat by yourself yeah you know because I'd send your pictures of beer cans and so you went up there with the intent of just you needed to be alone. Not because I wanted to be alone, but because the noise was just, it was, listen,

here's something that nobody, there's a few people that know, but, you know, everybody's wired a little differently. And, you know, I was in the game and never really took time to just be by myself. So I loved that, that I had a place where I was protected. You drive by me, you go in the lake. You can't get in unless you're invited.

or as I said earlier trespassing, and I would get up in the morning with my compass and I'd strike out. I'd have a backpack, enough water, snacks, and I'd go. And I would go and go and go until I was out in the middle of the woods and I loved it. I just loved it. I wasn't packing a pistol in case I crossed paths with a bear, although I kind of hoped I saw a bear. I just loved the challenge of it. And then I'd get out in the middle of the woods and I'd say, all right, let's see how close I can come to coming back to the original spot, just with a compass.

And I loved it. And I did that four times, five times a week, all by myself. Yeah. What I discovered during that time alone is that I'm obviously wired differently. I love to be challenged. I just love it. And most drivers could relate to that. and I operate better with the pressure

and then I discover also that when that's absent it's pretty damn lonely you know imagine if you had all the money in the world you got a beautiful place and you got plenty of things to be happy about but if you spend too much time there by yourself it's a miserable existence. And I sort of did that to myself.

So, yeah, because in my mind, it's freaking noisy in my world. And sometimes I'm thinking too noisy. And so in my mind, I'm like, you know, maybe it isn't, maybe my imagination doesn't build the type of place that you went to, but it builds someplace. Some place.

I talk to Amy all the time. I'm like, man, what if we lived here? here. What if we live there? And it sounds like a great idea. Yeah, you romanticize it. Yeah. And I know, but I know in the very, very back of my mind that it would be temporary. Temporary and it would never work out or be what I would expect it or dream it to be. And so you basically went and emptied the tank. So is that a product or a byproduct of our experiences or our personality. Like, it's amazing that you describe everything that I wanted and I created it.

You created it. It happened. And I found out in the end, you really did need the noise, some of the noise, maybe not all the noise. Yeah. But is that a product of having gotten knocked around and beaten up? Yeah. I think, to me, I feel like that, so there's a lot of. about racing that I don't miss. There's a bunch of it that wasn't always, it wasn't great,

it wasn't fun. But I miss, I miss the competition. I miss, I miss climbing in my car. I miss trying to get it faster in practice. There's parts of that I miss that I'll never be able to do again. And so I think that we, we fight the depression of that. We fight the sadness of that. We fight the frustration over that, you know, not that not being our choice. There's a component of our life as race car drivers that will never exist again. No. And we think that, man, if I can go here, I'll be happy. Yeah. If I can just put myself in this place, that'll make me happy.

Yeah. But no, when you go sit in that place and then all the noise is gone, what are you got, what's going to be going on in your brain? Do you remember years ago I sent you a text? And I said, all the fun is in the struggle. Yeah. And you responded very quickly, and you laughed and said, man, you nailed it. And so one of the, the component that's missing for you and I, and it will forever at this point,

is that every week we knew where we stood because all we had to do is look at the scoreboard, never lied. No. I mean, sometimes it was, there were intangibles. But if you finish fourth, if you finish 24th, it's not enough. And what brought you back every week was that idea of winning. and the prospect of winning. And there's not been anything in my life that I've been able to replicate that scoreboard.

I will tell you that I will work for myself the rest of my life. Now, I'll partner with people, but I will roll my own boat because I love that. I'm doing it right now. And I want to build something and I want to be around, create a team. but I'm not sure to ever be quite like what I experienced behind a wheel of a race car. I'd do the same thing. Like when I got in the broadcast booth, I tried to find what I've tried to find things about my broadcasting that equated to the scoreboard.

Did we win today? Right. Did I just dominate that segment? You know, and I couldn't really, I couldn't really get it to measure up, right? Now, broadcasting is a blast. Doing the podcast, there's numbers. there's rankings there's a scoreboard there's there's competitors yeah there's competition it's not exactly the same it's not as exhilarating as driving a race car but they're winning the

dayton at 500 yeah but i do you're right like so that's what's missing or that's what you're seeking post driving career is that scoreboard i want to be challenged i want to have to climb up that board I want to get to the top. I want to be at the top and I want to be on top of all those other numbers, right? All those other people. Hey, there's good news for you. Help is on the way.

So, you know, the center of my universe of my three children, but they're older. And, and, but your children will fill some of that. Yeah. Because their Daytona 500s are coming, whether it's a dance recital or a baseball game. I hear you on that. I don't know what you're talking about because I haven't experienced it, but I, you know,

it's kind of like trying to tell somebody before the baby gets here all the things they're going to experience when it happens. But I'm going to trust you on that. You know, Josh Barry, you guy drives for us here. It's like a son to me. You know, he's in a way, I've never, I've never been more nervous watching someone else race, right? I want all our cars to win. I want all our company to be successful.

When he's driving, it's like something else happens inside me that I can't control. But that's fleeting. It's there only on Saturday and only for those few hours. And it's not every day and it's not all year. And filling the gaps with something that stirs those emotions inside of you is the challenge, I think. When we were drivers, you lived it every moment of every day. Even on Monday, even in the middle of December during the offseason, you were a damn driver and you were going to put on that suit come February.

And you were going to go to the shop and you were going to do all the responsibilities and you were around it. You lived it every day, every moment. I can give you a lot of perspective. Even, you know, right now, again, my life is very good. I'm not, you know, I say if I'm here, here's the objective. You know, I'm not at the top, but I can see the top. And sometimes you overthink things.

And I will say that the one thing that makes you exceptional in the booth and as good as I've ever heard is that whether you did it by mistake or you did it because it is who you are, you give people your experiences, which is your only advantage because you drove, you won, you represented the sport. and then you give your opinion and the opinion is equally important a lot of really really talented drivers never gave their opinion and they tried to give their experiences but the best drivers that I was around they didn't have to think about it

it came natural as a six cents they drive the hell out of you right I mean they drive the hell out of the race car but not know how they want for 95% of the drivers they have to know why they want they have to or they won't one again The 5% that just do it because they're exceptional, they're not much fun to listen to on TV, in my opinion.

You won a lot of races, but the most important thing that you've contributed to the sport is that you've remained sincere and genuine, and it resonates with the fans. I thought a long time ago, I thought, you know, you're sort of the combination of your dad, and I believe that with the talent, but you're relatable. and most superstars aren't relatable they don't even try to be they get caught up in their image and their identity and the way you dress the way you talk to people all that is relatable

it's good Ricky I got a question I got to back up for a second did writing your exit and controlling your exits means so much to you that you give up something you loved and even just equated to even driving which was television

Why did you retire from television? I didn't love Fox. That was the primary reason I retired. It's not because there was anything wrong with Fox. Excellent company. I would invest in the company with quality people. I went to Fox for two years, but it felt like I had gone to A school for 11 years,

and then my parents moved me and put me in another high school for the final year. And at that point in my life, it just wasn't enjoyable. Again, the pandemic had a tremendous influence on all of us. The pandemic caused me to retire because it gave me six weeks where I had nothing to do but think. If you take nothing away from this show, take away the fact that if you give me too much time to think, I'm going to get in trouble. Listen, I've got to be honest with you. You know what my takeaways are with you?

is one is I thought the concussion was the source of all the issues you've dealt with. I think it actually had more to do with a relational situation that you never were able to rectify with your dad. Well, you got it also from a 20,000 foot view, you've got to connect the concussions with depression. I do. I do. I certainly do. But not that the concussions cause it, but they could accelerate it or make them more pronounced the vulnerability of it. of it. Right. I don't know the answer to that. Nobody will. Just as nobody will know, you know, there are a few people in my life that say, you know, and I say this tongue and cheek, but, you know,

you've got CTE, you know, I don't have CTE. I'm convinced I don't have CTE, but I guess I'm comforted by the fact that I'll never know because you can only know. I know, but the relational thing actually goes deeper because I think both you guys are a lot, I think y'all are so similar in ways. And that is, you're looking for ways to go be alone. But then when you're alone, I can speak for you. You always wanted to surround yourself with buddies. Even when you were like, I cannot wait to go home. I cannot wait to go home. I just want to be at home. I want to spend it home. And as soon as you get to home, if you were alone, you called people to be there with you. I mean, whether it was in the bus, you wanted people, you always wanted somebody around. If you were going somewhere, you wanted somebody

with you. And yet, this was the struggle that you race car drivers deal with. That is, it's like, you've got that noise thing. Y'all are so similar in that regard. Mike, I think you make a great point. And, you know, it, so I go back to Moosehead Lake, which, you know, it's part of my fiber. I mean, everybody's got a place. And it's, you know, when I got hurt at Texas, I went back to Moosehead. Moose Head helped me heal.

It was the healing pool. Yeah, it's just a, just a wonderful place. And I'm there at my little paradise. And in very short order, I discovered that, that, I was a, I got to challenge myself, and I'd walk out in the middle of wilderness with no way back except a compass. And every day I'd go somewhere different. You know, that is part of my hard wiring. You know, like a lot of people would say to you and you can't answer it, well, how do you race cars at 200 miles per hour?

I never thought about the risk until I did. I thought about the risk when Clifford Allison lost his life. I thought about the risk when Adam Petty lost his life. and Kenny Irwin and of course your dad, I somehow compartmentalized it. Sure. Because I wasn't done. But I will tell you, and I mean this,

hand on heart, after I won Martinsville, I remember going under the checkered flag and time stopped. It's like time paused. And it was like, there's always been a side of me that says, okay, now I'm done. I had three years where I battled back, and Cal Wells, who I have tremendous allegiance to, he threw me a lifeline.

I threw him one, and we were so good for each other, and ultimately we checked all those boxes because we won at Martinsville, but in some ways, you know, that's all I had. And, you know, you just got to find a way to replace that. And we're not indifferent from like basketball players or coaches. You know, there's a reason that they just keep going and going and never retire. Right. You say, well, why don't you, why doesn't Roger Penske just buy a great big boat? Well, he's already got a big boat.

It just doesn't use it, right? Like all these guys, it's work, work, work. I think I'll discover, though, that ultimately the material stuff doesn't actually fulfill you the way you assumed it would all this time. Like, you know, victories fulfilled you. But those don't last forever. And so ultimately, this, you know, surrounding yourself with people so you're not lost in loan and your thoughts, that also can be a detriment, which is so confusing to you because at one point that was your healing, right? But then when your life changes, all of a sudden, what you thought healed is actually a detriment.

Yeah, that's funny. I woke up this morning and like I logged 3.2 miles this morning and a byproduct of Mickey Collins. And, you know, you've got to put into work. as a good friend told me, you got to put into work. And when I put in the work, I'm me. And I woke up this morning. I'm like, I think the best 20 years of my life are ahead of me. But you've got to put in the work, right, Dan?

You've got to put in the work. I hope I haven't deviated too much, but I want the world to know that if you put into work, this is a great life. Yeah. What's next? What are you doing? What are you building?

So my son is with me at Motorsport. We bought 42 or 3 C7 Corvettes last year. Started out just buying Corvettes. I love Corvettes. Always loved Corvettes, but when you're a race car driver, you don't get to drive or buy what you want. You sort of drive what you're associated with. So that was, the Corvettes have always been front and center, but he's here with me, working with me, and that's been a catalyst. And I would like, what's next is to build something.

You know, that's my objective. I'm going to build something more than likely it'll be having affiliation with automobiles, cars or something. Did you say you bought 42, 42 Corvettes? bought in, sold. Oh, but, you know, I discovered that as much as I love Corvettes, I like connecting with people. And there's been as much fun, maybe more fun, with buying cars like a discovered, really, Kaka found me, a 67 rally sport. They bought that from Linda and Kilgore,

their son Jason. Linda inherited it from her brother who passed away. He was the 1967 Armed Forces athlete of the year. He took that money. He bought a 67 Camaro. He had it his whole life. And then he passed. and he never got married, never had children.

And she had that car. That car's being restored in Canapolis. That's, you know, it's a story. It's fun. That stuff's fun. I really enjoy it. Whatever happened to the Chevelle that you bought in the field? I sold that to Hornaday.

Hornaday put, I think you put an enormous amount of money into it, and you'll have to check with him. So he had it. Yeah. Yeah. Does he still have it, you think? I don't know. That's good question.

That's the one that started it all, man. The only thing I ever hear about Hornaday does he still have the couch because everybody slept on his couch. That's right. You know, you think about Ron Horner Day. You had Red Farmer on a while back. This show, this show is very healthy. It's an important part of our sport because, you know, it's just a, it's sort of a melting pot of people.

Yeah. It's been great. We've enjoyed, I would have never imagined, you know, what it has become. But I've enjoyed it. here talking to you you know I knew I would and and we've been we text and we phone call we spend much time face to face but I told you months ago that we would do this and we'd sit down and have this conversation and I'm glad it I'm glad things are going well I'm glad that you got a you know you got a target in front of you that you're aiming for and I appreciate

you man just being honest and you know you've helped me uh through a lot of situations that I've dealt with over the years and you've been a good sounding board and it's been fun to sit down here and hear some of your truth and I think people are going to enjoy it. Well, I appreciate both of you and your team and I expect we're going to have several more conversations going forward. Yeah. Y'all do them on the show. Don't do them in text. That's the thing. Everybody's going to listen to this and just want more Ricky Craven. No, I don't. You say, you know, you're very nice. But, you know, people, what I think makes this show so special is that, again, it's a melting pot.

You know, you bring in all aspects of life. And, you know, real quick, if we have the time. Sure. I love what's going on with our sport right now. You know, we've needed for the owners to have more equity in NASCAR. And you're seeing that with a strong ownership base. you're going to have new names like a Ross Chassain and Daniel Suarez and I think there's some real energy behind NASCAR right now that's been absent for a while no I agree I think you're right I think the ownership side as they move closer and closer toward a franchise based sport much like we have in in sticking ball right where basically the owners are making enough money to be able to hire who they want to hire yeah and not be forced in hiring some people that maybe they wouldn't hire.

That's when things are going to really take off. And they're there, like the guy that won this race this past weekend, that's exactly what we'll be seeing every single week. Yeah, we need that. We need that our sport to be built on hunger and desire and all of its participants, whether they're drivers or owners or crew members. Yeah, I agree, buddy. I think it's on the upsling.

Yes. Yes, sir. Well, thank you, Ricky. I appreciate you coming. in here and giving us all your time and I hope you have a great week. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Ricky Craven on the Dale Jr. download.

Are we rolling with this right now? Let's hit it. Let's roll with it. All right. We are live. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. We're live at the Ask Junior portion of the show.

And guess what? This portion is brought to you by Xfinity. They're back. They're back. Yeah. Good for them. They've been a great supporter of our podcast for a couple of years. And now they're back again supporting their particular

part of the show, the Asch Junior Show, or Asht Junior Segment. So we're excited about that. Thank you, Exfinity. I am a customer, and I enjoy being a customer of Exfinity. I've never had an outage. Can you believe that? I've been a customer theirs for two and a half years now. They didn't even know it.

They didn't know it. And no outage. So there you go. Hey, listen, thank you, Exfinity. Hannah Newhouse is here with some questions. I'm even all the way on the end of the line. What do you mean by that? Like, if there is to be an out.

How did you think it affect me first? You're on the outskirts. I'm on the very age. Yeah. And no problem. I love it. Anyhow, we're just glad they're back. Hannah's here again.

She's going to gather the questions that you guys have been sending in, and boy, I can't wait to hear what you've got to ask this week. Man, in the chat right now is absolutely blowing up. So we've got a ton of people that are joining us. But the first question here comes from Ryan Johnson. Have you started any iRacing preparation for your Xfinity start in Martinsville in a few weeks? It's coming up quick. I saw that question.

I did. I saw that timeline. I have not been running any Martinsville laps at iRacing. I should. That is a great idea. And eye racing is a good tool. I'm supposed to go to the Chevy simulator in a couple days to get some laps in there. But I would prefer to do a lot of time on ir racing.

And I'll probably start getting into that. I think today is the 29th, and my race is on the 8th. So I'll probably try to run a little bit of Martinsville, like in the 72 to 48 hours leading up to that Friday event. And the next one here, a little pop culture for you. Jay Rolf wants to know, we all know that you aren't much for confrontations. But what do you think about the Will Smith Oscar incident? I wish Will didn't do that. I like Chris Rock and think that you got to know you got to you got to know who was the host for years.

Ricky Jervas was the Golden Globes and that was those were hilarious. I mean, you know, you got to know. Yeah, you got to know that things are going to get pretty serious in terms of the jokes. And yeah, so I wish that, you know, that gets handled a little differently. You talk to the guy afterwards, maybe. Say, hey, man, that really bothered me. I mean, some things can be personal, and that's okay. And you take it to that person and say, look, man, I wish you wouldn't go there.

Right? I don't know. What do you think, Mike? I know you got an opinion. I do. Are you willing to give it live on YouTube? I'm going to be honest with you. Okay, go ahead.

I tweeted something last night about, do you all remember the time when Joaquin Phoenix pulled one over on the entire world? I saw that tweet, but I was too lazy to hit the link. No, that's okay. So what happened? Well, he basically, it was a bit, and it was a thing that he had, and he convinced everybody. And I'm going to tell you something. It is an unpopular opinion.

But if we find out in a year that it was actually orchestrated, I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised that that thing was actually orchestrated. Because there are things about that I'm just not ready to go buy all in yet. One, Chris Rock leaned in. He didn't flinch. He didn't do anything. You look at the steel frames of that. He just did.

It almost as if he knew it was coming. I'm just saying. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. The other thing, the yelling from the front row seemed just so so asinine to me to yell at the Oscars out, just to yell out like that. That's why nobody approached it because everybody assumed it was a bit, right? You didn't know to go Restrain Will Smith I'm just saying if in a year we found out

It was actually A thing I would not be surprised Like the way we found out that Joaquin Phoenix was doing a movie Yeah I think that it's real I think that Will Just Lost his cool And and he

He probably has a bit of regret The other thing though Is I was looking and Chris has a comedy tour this summer with Kevin Hart. And so I think that, you know, it's in Chris's best interest to just make this work for him. That's kind of also my point. Like, who is it going to go watch that now? Yeah, like if Chris doesn't have, you know, five to 30 minutes of content, a new material,

and even Kevin, right, could lean in on this a little bit, give Chris a hard time. time. Yep. Oh, you know they will, right? Yeah, yeah, man. I mean, I haven't watched the Academy Awards ever, and now you kind of have to, and I wasn't going to plan on watching the Kevin Hart Chris Rock tour, but now you're kind of curious. Now, why would that be? I'm just saying, it feels like that everybody comes out looking pretty good out of this, and then you start to wonder, oh, wait, maybe there was something behind it. I just wouldn't be surprised. Next question. Next question comes from John Boy. What prize would you like if you were attending the Dirty Mo Experience Suite at Charlotte?

And that is if Mike will even let you in without buying a ticket. No, wait a second. That's actually on the question. Yeah. Y'all giving away prizes? We do give away prizes. Everybody walks out with a prize. Well, first of all, can I just say that Dale Jr. can't be at the ultimate experience because he's going to be at the Indianapolis 500.

Yeah. That is right, right? Yes, I'm working the 500. I think I'm working the Derby and the 500 this year. year. Nice. Yeah. What kind of gift would I want?

I don't know. I mean, what are we talking here? 50 bucks, 20 bucks, 10 bucks? I'll talk. What's the gift? What's the prices on these things? They were handing out fireball shots at the last time. No, no, no.

Let me tell you the most popular gift that we gave way. I don't want a fireball shot. That's right. But I would take a bag of actual fireball candy. That would be a big. I love fireball. Wait a second. The biggest gift, and there were two of them that people were so

excited about at the last ultimate experience was autographed bottles of high rock vodka people were ready to fight over those things and now you wouldn't want it signed by you but a bottle of high rock vodka is a dang good prize to walk out of there with are you talking about those like round big ones like the the fireball things or that's all there are that's only fireball candy that i've ever heard of red hots yeah okay but those are red hot those aren't fireballs. Yeah, you're right. Okay. You, go. You, I just wanted to do.

Who needs clarification on what a fireball candy is? This dumb ass. This guy. Has anybody else on YouTube confused when I said fireball candy, what I was talking about? Only, only, Dillner. God, oh my. All right. Moving on before Dillner digs a deeper hole. A couple people have actually asked this between last week and this week, but obviously with Hendrick announcing their track attack program going to LaMont and kind of some insight on who could potentially be driving those cars. Would that be something if this program continues, you know, something that maybe you would be interested in?

Oh, definitely not. So I'm not going to LaMont to race. That's never happening. I, you know, I want to go and watch it as a fan. I want to take it in. and it's an amazing event. It's a historical event. One of the most history

motorsports events in the world every year. I want to see it. I want to witness it. But I said the same thing about the Daytona 24 hours. Having been there in broadcasting and watching that event,

the drivers in those cars are elite. They're not, you know, they're not retired, you know, 47-year-old NASCAR guys that have limited, moderate success at road courses, those guys aren't clamoring to getting those cars. And there won't be one showing up at the Lamont.

And whoever they put in the car is going to be an established talent that has road course success, true road course success. But anyhow, I think that it's great. So there's been a lot of debate about like, okay, why Hendrick, this ain't fair what the heck so here's

here's my thoughts on all that so I have said for a couple years now having again been to the broadcast booth for the Daytona 24 there should be a NASCAR class in that race and it shouldn't be like this

extra it shouldn't be this sort of fantasy class like they have in the garage 58 or whatever it's called it shouldn't be like this one-off thing. They should have a true stock car class in the 24 hours of Daytona. Every organization

from NASCAR, all of the charter teams should be entering a car into that class. Should it factor into the NASCAR points championship? I don't think so. But it should be there and it should be a test of durability for the next year in car.

And it would be a benefit to the teams to contribute their time to be able to understand and learn the car going forward. But I am all for them sending a car to Le Mans. It's been done in the past. I'm okay that it's Hendrick. I would have been fine if it was Gibbs. I'm not, I don't think they're playing favorites. I don't think all the teams can literally afford to go do it. Some can, some can't.

Although they would love to go, the feasibility and logistics of actually sending cars, maybe not, isn't there for, isn't in everybody's best interest or every organization's interest. Let it be Hendrit. Let it be whoever. Send a car over there. Let the car run. I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't think it can hurt anything. Is it a bit of an advantage for Hendrick? I don't think you can argue against that. I think surely it's going to be an advantage for Hendrit, but I think it's worth taking that risk that you allow this team to gain some knowledge by having a stock car in one of the most critical and important races in the

world. Everybody's going to be tuning in to see how this car does, how the durability of the car is. And like I said, it's not a new thing. Who owned the car, the 90 car in 78? Junie Donnell. Judy Donnelly. He sent a car over there, and his car ran. I think the Wood Brothers sent one over there.

It's not this, it's not too crazy of an idea. So, you know, I just, I don't know why there's any kind of real debate over why it's happening. Just let it happen. It's a good thing. It's good for us. It's good for everybody. And maybe next year, there'll be a true class. They'll be a legitimate class.

Or there could be five or six or a dozen cars entered. You know, and everybody gets to play. They kind of did something similar on the West Coast when we got rid of those steel body cars. They had that endurance steel body class that ran like all the West Coast road courses and all the West teams were putting their drivers in those endurance races because it was you're going to learn how to drive one of these things for a couple hours it was you could tell who went and ran those races it was it was actually really cool cool social experiment um next one here what are a few things you think NASCAR can do to continue helping shine the light on local

short track racing from Tyler well I think that uh to for for NASCAR to shine a light on local short track. So way back in the 80s and 90s, Winston, when they were sponsoring the NASCAR Cup series, the Winston Cup series, they also sponsored the regional series. Every track that was NASCAR sanctioned got buckets of red and white paint, and there was Winston signage at every racetrack, and they truly supported grassroots racing. Winston did. And that connected the Friday night and a Saturday night racer to the cup level. And that legitimized short track racing

and it also legitimized the pipeline up to the cup level for those drivers, right? It made them believe that they really might be a path, right? And it was realistic. That's kind of been gone. There's no, where is the pipeline or where is that connection, right? And what is the link,

visible link from NASCAR at the cup level down to these short tracks all over the country. NBC has, you know, I've been a witness to some of the efforts that NBC's done with their grassroots program, having signage and celebrating some of the weekend success at some of these local tracks. But, you know, we need to definitely have all hands on deck when it comes to trying to make sure that short track racing is healthy, make sure that the tracks are surviving, and that the car counts are good. And it's, you know, so that that's important,

you know, that the tracks that are close to you, close to me, you know, are going to be around for a really long time. And it's a critical time, I think, and it's a critical time now for a lot of these tracks, you know i don't want to i don't want to speak uh out of at a school but some of these tracks are are teetering on just making it year to year literally just you know getting by and um and that's that's a scary uh that's a scary situation for a lot of fans a lot of people all across the

country uh that you know any day their track could could close and we see closures you know coming uh coming at a steady pace. And so I think we need to make sure that somehow the success of what's happening at the cup level and Exfinity and truck, and all that trickles down into the pockets of track owners and competitors. I remember when they did that tour of the champions,

and like you said, they were sending champions into my home track of Twin Falls, Idaho. We had Sterling Marlin come out, and I got the chance to race a limited late model against Kenny Wallace. And I remember when they announced it, the grandstands were packed. Absolutely.

packed because Kenny Wallace was racing at Magic Valley Speedway in Twin Falls, Idaho. And it was part of his contract. He even told us, he's like, that was a NASCAR deal. We would go and race a car at one of these tracks. And it was whoever had a car available slammed. I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't stand in that place. You know, that's a big deal in Twin Falls, Idaho. And the residual was that people that maybe didn't know who was running at their local track knew the name Sterling Marlin. So they came out to Magic Valley Speedway and packed the place. It was really cool to see that trickle down. That's a great point that getting some of the stars back to the short tracks. I know some of the stars do do that. Please don't come at me. But, you know, trying to get them

in these areas where they particularly might not go to, right, the local tracks that are in those markets, those race markets. I remember when we were, I think we're at the Watkins Glen one year, and we had a match race with a bunch of guys, Kyle Petty and all of us went over and ran some track on Friday night or something. It was a blast. We didn't do that enough. And we don't do it enough today. And last one for you here. From Nick, with the tragic news of the passing of Food Fighters, Taylor Hawkins. Do you have a favorite food fighters song? Monkey Ranch is probably my favorite.

And like a lot of people, I was a really, really big Nirvana fan. And when Kurt took his life, that was a difficult time. And it was amazing to see Dave Grohl. recreate himself musically and food fighters came out of the gate and I immediately latched on to their sound and loved what they were

doing and they've been you know they sustained their success and and the pace of productivity over the years you know you really love bands that continue to create continue to provide you with what you want

and that's music and that's great sounds and REM and some of those bands with that long staying power i would put food fighters in that group you know so it was a that was a difficult difficult uh piece of news to learn and um and i can't imagine you know what that must be doing to uh to the band uh taylor's family and friends um i imagine that they're still dealing with the shock of that um but uh monkey wrench was my favorite it's a tool You know, it's silly the things that you latch on to, but I love the pace of that song, the video. There's a lot of songs of theirs that I was a big fan of, but Mike Wrenge's top of the list.

Perfect. That is it. That was the last question. All right, y'all. So great questions. We really got into some good stuff, and I didn't run too long because Matthew never made this sound, this sign. Yeah. Matthew never did that. Wrap it up.

So anyways, thanks again for it. Xfinity coming back and being a part of our Ask Junior segment. We love having them supporting our show. And if you need some fast internet and reliable internet, I'm telling you it's reliable. X-Fi is where it's at. So, Hannah, thanks for being back.

And I guess earlier in the show, we established that she's going to stick around for the rest of the year. It's just words. I don't see a contract on the table signed, but I'm going to take you guys at your word. We've got some, we've got some stability now in a very critical

position in a show. We were kind of rudderless there for a while, Mike. But now we are now. We were never rudderless. Now we were a lot. We were a boat. Lost at sea. And now we are headed to port. So

thank you guys for tuning in, supporting us. Ricky Craven was our guest today. He was great. Ricky had a lot of highs and lows. He brought me this really cool a couple it's just basically so what I'm holding in my hand is an Earnhardt racing team plan

for for racing in a season it's kind of a sponsor proposal so from 1975 dad and his friends sit down and type this out you can see the handwritten notes right here and they they have like plan number two plan number three plan number four, plan number one. And basically it spells out how much money they need to race,

where they want to race, the track championships they want to go run and try to win, and dad's salary. So dad's salary was $150 a week, proposed salary. So $7,800 bucks. He needed 80 tires at $6,000, $77 a tire, and he needed six engines. And now there were other proposals where Randy Earnhardt, his brother would get paid $720 a year,

and Danny Earnhardt would get paid $720 a year as well. So, and there's on this, on proposal number three, for the year. There's crew uniforms, which would cost $1,000. The telephone bill would be $240. We're going to include that in the package. Rent for the building, $1,200, $200, 200 tires at $77 a piece, or 10 engines. Really incredible stuff.

So Ricky Craven brought this to me. He found this and somebody handed it to him, so he brought it to me. But anyways, thank you, Ricky. He's great to listen to. And that's the show. I hope everybody has a great week. We're wrapping it up. Any last words from Mike Davis?

No, let's go eat some lunch. All right, let's go have some bojangling. We'll see you all later. Check out Dirty Mo Media. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.