The Dale Jr. Download - 382 - Doug Yates: Win with Advantages

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Yates, a name synonymous with power. Master engine builder Doug Yates, son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Robert Yates, comes to "the table of truth" to share stories with Dale Earnhardt Jr., and co-host Mike Davis, about a family legacy filled with ups, downs and everything between.Growing up in North Carolina, the epicenter of modern stock car racing, Doug knew nothing different than his father Robert working on engines. But life in Charlotte shifted to the hills of North Wilkesboro. The Yates family uprooted, and went to work for NASCAR car-owner and folk hero Junior Johnson. Living on a farm, just steps away from a modest laboratory of speed, Robert Yates crafted horsepower into the wee hours of the night with his young son right beside him. Doug details the formidable years they spent in Wilkes County and how it prepared them for their racing timeline.When DiGard Racing came calling, Robert packed up and left the farm. The departure caused tension between Robert and Junior for years. It wouldn't be the only tension. Darrell Waltrip's departure from DiGard resulted in unspoken animosity that spanned decades. It wasn't until Robert's final months, before cancer took his life, that son Doug found a way to get them together to bury the hatchet.Doug gives us a unique perspective on DiGard’s successes, like the ‘83 title run w/ Bobby Allison and the Daytona 500 win that some called “bumper-gate.” He also details dynamics that led to the fall of DiGard and his father leaving the sport. In 1985, just two years after his engine won, Yates watched the Great American Race from his television.But soon the sport that came calling for Yates again. Rick Hendrick was using his engines when Ford set up the next opportunity. Doug carefully details the alignment with Ranier-Lundy racing that led eventually led to the creation of Robert Yates Racing.While young phenom Rusty Wallace was in line to be their driver, Yates took a swing in a different direction, choosing a racer with a familiar pedigree, Davey Allison. With Allison's raw talent and the straightaway speed of Yates Engines, it created speed that even the Intimidator wasn't pleased with. Doug admits the Yates engines were cranking out about 50-horsepower more than the other Ford engines. This forced NASCAR to get involved.The following years of the Yates story read like a novel. Wins and a near title w/ Davey were followed by his untimely death in a helicopter crash in 1993. Yates opens up about his family's struggle with moving on from a driver that was like a son and a brother. Then, their next big star, Ernie Irvan’s practice crash at Michigan International Speedway. Ernie returned from severe head injuries, to win w/ RYR, but the accident proved to stunt the growth of a once promising career.Most don’t know that the next step for RYR nearly put Dale Earnhardt as the driver of the Texaco No. 28 Ford. What? But, it was Robert Yates who said he wanted another Dale. Once again, Yates went a different direction and his choice was Dale Jarrett. The combo proved lethal, netting the team two Daytona 500's and the 1998 NASCAR Cup Series Championship.Doug opens up about the unusual partnership that brought bitter rivals and the two giants of Ford Racing Engines to form an unlikely alliance. Just how did Jack Roush and Robert Yates agree to partner? Doug holds the key. The company still thrives today but not just in racing, manufacturing for medical companies, defense projects and more.OPEN SEGMENT Dale Jr. announces his new children’s book “Buster’s Trip to Victory Lane” “The” new and dirty name for Open Segment Mike’s commencement speech Kurt Busch's win! ASKJR presented by XfinityHannah brings fan questions to the table about: Drivers pulling those belts tight Dale Jr.’s Black-top desires How Dale Earnhardt would handle the SIM 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.

Chit-chat. Does it? Does it smell bad back here? It smells like broughtin meat. It smells like bad deer meat. Oh, here we go. I got it. I see what you're doing.

Do you smell anything, Dale? I see what you're doing. No. It might be coming from Mike. Yeah, it might be. Mike, you stink today? What's wrong, Mike? I had a freezer go out about a week or two ago in my barn where I keep venison.

I didn't know it. Well, I mean, I'm not in the barn every day. and I was out of town. He knows it now. I went in over the weekend, and man, it was the foulest situation. Foul, foul, just bad. And so, as it would be if you've had, you know, rotten meat sitting there for a week. Didn't you try and take it to the dump with all of the meat in it and they wouldn't take it?

I duck taped the refrigerator up and then they said, we're going to have to take a look in that fridge, you know? And I'm like, do we have to? It's the most redneck thing I've ever heard you too. to take it back home and I had to actually do what I was trying to avoid. And that was clean that thing out. And so, yeah. Oh, yeah. Did you throw up? No. No. I about threw up trying to get the refrigerator back in my truck, but that was just because I'm out of shape. Exertion. Yeah. Exertion. I would have just took in the, I would have taken the freezer down by the saplings and just dumped it. Those saplings. Pass the saplings.

You know, listeners don't know what we're talking about here. but Mike said saplings instead of saplings. I read what the word said. There's a ravine over there. Pass the saplings. Dumping in there. A sapling ravine. Hey, listen.

Don't think I didn't think about burying the whole thing. That's what you would have done, isn't it? You'd have buried the whole freezer. You're into burying stuff, right? It's got a refrigerated graveyard. As they've shown up to the dump with a duct taped closed fridge. There's a little suspect there, Mike. Yeah.

As I was driving back after my rejection, I thought, you know, I wonder what they really thought was in it. It's like a dead body or something. It didn't smell good. Yeah. They were probably like, hmm. It was gross. Yeah. Should we start the show?

Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. We're back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download with my co-host, Mike. How you doing, Mike? Doing great, bud. We're here live from the Budjangled studio.

And Matthew's here. Hannah's here. It's going to be a great show. and I've got a great guest for you guys today. I'm really excited about this. Doug Yates and Doug, you know, Yates, racing engines, they've created power in this sport and race-winning cars for many decades. His dad, Robert Yates, extremely famous, Hall of Famer.

Doug will soon probably be a Hall of Famer as well. And I learned, you know, through the notes and studying for this episode, that he has, you know, his history and the story and, this sport where he sort of, you know, where he was hanging out when he was little and so forth are some pretty cool places. Oh, yeah. So I can't wait to get him here at the table and talk about his experiences and there's just a lot there. And we're lucky to have him as a guest and I think people are going to really enjoy this. So hopefully we'll talk about some ingenuity too because I know that, you know, even if it isn't, you know, things that he might have done to his own engines,

I'm sure being in the, you know, engine department and in the engine business in racing, he has heard some very creative stories about how guys were making power over the years. That's always fun with our shows when we talk about that ingenuity. But yeah, let's get right to it. We got a big announcement today. We do. Should we dive right into that? Do you want to get into the announcement?

Would you like to get into the announcement? This is a big announcement. It is. All right? Go ahead. I'll let you do the honor. Well, there's a lot to unpack in today's show, but right out of the gate, I wanted to let everybody know that I've got a children's book that's coming out.

Look at you. You heard that correctly. Me and Mike. My wife, I mean, there's been a lot of people involved in creating this book, but it's called Buster's Trip to Victory Lane, and you can pre-order it now. That's right. You can start pre-ordering today. You go to dalejr.com slash buster. That's right.

Dale Jr.com slash buster. That's going to take you to a place where you can order this book. Becoming a dad. We wrote a book with McGee about my concussions and my, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, wrapping my career up and all that and everything that went on, right? We had a great experience with the publisher and made some great relationships. And when I became a father, they asked me, hey, man, would you be interested in doing a children's book?

I never would have thought that I would want to do that. But being a dad, you accumulate piles and piles of books, right? And while reading some of these books, now I'm not a three-year-old or a five-year-old, but some of them are really good. and some of them the kids really connect to and just like we got one book what is it called the moon book good night moon good night moon that's right both my little girls carry that damn thing around i see it every day mine did too every day and so they connect to certain ones and some of them are they could care less they just they don't even know they're there yeah and i'm just kind of uh i was just kind of

interested in that a little bit, but I wanted to try to see if I could create a story or create a book that would be interesting or that would connect to kids, right? Yeah. And we were given an opportunity. And I had some good personal involvement in helping craft the story, selecting the artist, what the cars look like and their names, characters. Yeah. We changed a lot of the story. There's a lot of little Easter eggs in the story of Buster's trip to Victory Lane. And, for example, as you'll see on the cover of the book, it says on the side of Buster's car, Punchy Motorsports.

That's the team that Buster drives for. Punchy is a nod to an old friend of mine. We recently passed away, and I thought that'd be a cool way to honor him. But there's some other characters, names, and so forth that I think people will make a connection to. But anyways, I'm excited. It's a good story. I think, I hope that kids will enjoy it.

We possibly, if, you know, if this goes well, we'll continue to do more. Well, it's a two-book deal. So we do have a second book that's going to be coming out as a sequel to this. Yeah. And so we're already talking about what that, you know, storyline itself might be like. That's right. Yeah, we started pitching some ideas to each other last night. So we're excited about this.

I can't wait for parents to get a hold of a copy and see what their kids' reactions are. and we'll see whether we got a book that kids are connected to. If you don't mind, Matthew, you read a manuscript of this, because you know, you and I were so closely to the book that you don't ever know if the story is actually resonating with kids, right? Like, I think you probably read it to your kids. Mine were a little older, so, like, you didn't know, that they're not a good read.

But Matthew, you read it to Hudson. Yes. And it's a, because it is a racing book. It's a racing kid's book. And so, Matthew, you loved it, right? Yeah, I mean, well, more importantly, Hudson loved it. So, you know, he's six now, but I think. he was five at the time that he read it and it was just going through the manuscript mode and

he's uh he's probably like me he's a little picky on some of his racing content yes and it seemed he enjoyed it you know i i took it as like i didn't want to enjoy it myself i wanted to read it to him and see if he'd enjoy it and to me that was the test yeah we changed uh you know we went back and forth with a lot of the details, if you will. You did. Yeah, the racing speak. Yeah. And, you know, there's a balance between trying to make sure that that is realistic,

but also it doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be, it can be pretty, you know, it's got to connect to a five-year-old, right? It doesn't have to be so literal. It doesn't have to make sense to us. Yeah, right. But anyways, it's a neat challenge, I think, to try to. I guess put yourself in in their shoes of a child's mind and predict I guess whether you're making the right choices or not

anyways we you know that was fun we you know we went through this big long you know we had a lot of artists to really choose from and there were some really really great ones but we kind of picked the one that we felt like we like the best and I mean just Buster himself yeah hold that book up so Buster I love the way that Buster looks yeah Buster himself now this car is designed or created with a nod, a very heavy nod to a dirt car that Robert G. own, my grandfather.

And we had a little die-cast model of that car on the desk for a while. But, so, I mean, there's all kinds of little things in the book that are, that connect to my history, my past, my friendships with people of the racers. Anyways.

Yeah. Congrats, man. That's awesome. Dalejutor.com slash Buster. That's where you can go pre-order this book. it's going to be a lot of fun. I think you guys will enjoy it and your kids will too. All right. Well, now that that's the part of the open segment,

I feel like we actually need to talk about that. We went to the fans last week and asked them for their suggestions on what the name of the open segment would be. Did you see any out there that you liked? My, I think my favorite one was, um, there were some good ones.

Yeah, I can't, I don't see it on here. Oh. No, no, no. Remember we were doing the Asch Jr. last week, and there was one that jumped right out into the front. Oh, in the ask you. Was it wide open? Yeah, there was wide open. There was dirty air.

Dirty air. I saw Dirty Air on Twitter, and I liked it. I like dirty air a lot. As annoying as dirty air is, we don't want to. Maybe that's really appropriate for this segment. Who knows? Put it all out there. I know.

Yeah, if anybody disagrees with our open takes, we can just tell them it is called dirty air. Right. It's not supposed to be, you know, fun. I like that. Yeah. Go ahead, Hannah. No, I was going to say, that was, we had a lot of good ones people put in. There was sidetracked, firing off, hot takes, the rundown, wide open.

I mean, people all week long were sending them in, but I agree. I feel like dirty air. It's the ambiance of this group. I like dirty air a lot. I think the next thing that clicks in my mind is do we go, do we look out into the, into the landscape or the lay of the land in podcasting and journalistic work in the industry and make sure we're not copying someone else. Is there another dirty air out there? There used to be.

We don't want to cringe on somebody else's idea or somebody else's project. Right? You have to cover your bases. I used to be on a podcast called The Dirty Air Podcast. Yeah. But that was a long time ago. Well, that's a terrible name for a podcast. Why would you name, we're not going to name the open segment, The Dirty Air.

Is it called, was it called the Dirty Air? It's called the Dirty Air podcast. That's terrible. of course it is why would you put the word of course it is why would you put the before who came up with the name was it you

absolutely not because if I came up with it you know Dale would poo all over just sitting here waiting just wait I know he's sitting there smirking smirking I'm with you smirking just like our text messages last night

I wanted to eggplant you I'm just kidding okay so so the open the new name for the open segment is going to be called the dirty air The dirty air.

But we shouldn't Ohio State this shit. No, the. The dirty air. The dirty air segment. Now time for the dirty air segment. Why wouldn't they name the podcast just dirty air? Well, there was one called dirty air, but NASCAR used to do a podcast called dirty air. It was funny because, is that the one?

Yeah. Well, we did the dirty air podcast and then they started a little sector of it called dirty air. And I think they only did like two, three episodes or something and it didn't work. Right. And honestly, I don't feel so bad doing it this way because I remember Kate Davis worked at NASCAR at the time. And she called me and she goes, listen, we're going to do a podcast called Dirty Air. If you think that that's sort of playing off of your DirtyMo Media, you would be correct. That's what we're doing.

We're trying to basically, you know, ride in your wake and do this. So I said, well, at least they're honest, right? But it didn't really last and it didn't really matter. I mean, like, you know, I'm a fan of podcast, so I didn't get worked up over it. But if that's the only thing that would conflict, I don't think that would be a problem. Yeah. Let's just make sure, but I think Dirty Air's the leader. What's your P2?

Do you have a P2? I think there's probably, the rundown is nice, but I think I don't think any of those are my P2. Got you. The open segment is. Yeah. I think Hot Laps might be second. Yeah. Time for some hot laps.

M. Okay. Not a fan. It's okay. He's just hoping you were going to say Hot Takes. It slides. No, I'm done with Hot Takes now. It slides out of my top five.

So I think of pancakes. If Matthew didn't like it. I'm just going to go the opposite. I need Matthew to like it. No, you don't. Oh, boy. You know, Matthew likes to put periods after a word, so it would be like the period, dirty, period, period, period, period, segment, period.

Why don't they do that? You do it all the time. Even like your tweets will do it. That's when you're like, I really mean this. Yes. This is important. Most people just capital. the things, but it's fine.

Well, I capitalized a lot of things before, and then I got ragged on for that. So I'm less... I got picked on one time for putting too many exclamation points in my emails. Really? Yeah. Like, I guess I got into the habit of like every sentence ended with like four or five exclamation points. Yeah, that's...

Really enthusiastic. I'm so happy! That's over the top. I did. It's annoying. Didn't you guys used to put the mood, too, didn't you tell me? One time you'd put like... That was in emails.

That was in emails because, like, you know, There was a time, that's funny, there was a time when, I don't know, I guess we were all on edge. It was that time of year where we're just like all like, you know, at each other. And so like every email that you and I would write back forth to each other, we would assume the absolute worst tone. Yeah. Like it could just be like, hey, see you here in a little bit. And you'd be like, what's your problem? What is he trying to say?

I'm not going to be on time? And so I said, I swear, I'm going to start putting my mood or the tone of the email in all caps at the top of email. So he knows, like, jovial. Yeah. Hey, see you in a little while. Or, you know, serious. You know, just so we are all clear on what the tone of the email is supposed to be. So me and Kelly were doing that text message.

We'd have, we would have just a very quick brief back and forth. Hey, what's up? Not much. Okay. Man, you're short. What's wrong? Nothing. Well, your answer's just short and brief.

Am I annoying you? Are I texting you? No. No, you're not annoying me. Well, all right. I'll just go back in my hole. Right. And I'm like, and so Kelly's like, just use emojis in every, like, not in every text, but Kelly's like, it really helps when you use emojis. So I know that you're not, you know,

you're in, you're in whatever mood you're in. So I always, like, I'll type a text to her. And right before I hit sin, I go, oh, oh, I've got to put a smiley face. Good. Okay, send. You were sending cryptic texts this weekend. Like? Morning. Like, hey, I'm... Afternoon. No.

So I was given, I was testing, Mike. So the other day... You're testing me. The other day, Mike goes to do this commencement speech, right? And I think we can all say that we're so excited for Mike, wanting him to have a great experience. He's wanting, you know, he's proud of Georgia Southern, and he's going back to, you know, it's a big deal, right?

So after he was done, I sent a message to him and I was like, hey man, how to go? And, you know, several hours later, he's busy. Several hours later, I'm like, look, man, just let me know how it went. I'd take one word response, no big deal. And he laughed and said good. So this weekend, I thought I'm going to send him a good morning text, like when I get up. So I sent a text that just said good morning.

He didn't respond. So I waited until later in the day and I sent a text afternoon. and he's like, what's up? And I'm like, nothing? Just saying, hey. He's like, okay. What's so cryptic? I'm on the beach.

I'm hanging out. I'm having a good vacation with my family. I was dealing with that little freezer problem that I had with the school of me. That's what I was doing. And I also about set a property on fire and I almost got electrocuted. Those are shareable things that I would have thought would be interesting. That's why I wasn't immediately responsive. That would have been a good response to afternoon. Hold on. I almost set property on fire.

I got a bunch of bad meat and a fire to put out. Literally. That would have been true. Yeah. But, I mean, look, you know, it was my problem. Context, please. I was installing a microwave. We had this condo that we ran out, and I was installing a microwave, which is one of those hanging microwaves, you know, like beneath the cabinet on the wall. You know what I'm saying?

and I was drilling a hole in the wall and I hit a wire. I hit the wire from the stove and it shot sparks out the hole and started smoking. And I thought, this whole thing's about to go up. Oh, boy. Yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, you smell burning. I don't know if there's a fire behind the wall. I'm about to find out.

You know, I go kill all, you know, I kill every breaker there is, right? Like just killing it all. And it's like, yeah, that was a big deal. And then when the electrician came out, they're like, you are lucky. Matthew sent us all a text. What he sent? Good segment, guys. With an exclamation point.

He's happy. Oh. Did he really? And a smiley face. Now, you just lectured him last week about the group text stuff during the show, right? Oh, this was on the proper group text. I made sure. Okay.

I get a gold star at the top of my homework today. I'm sitting here talking about how I almost died, and you're sitting there texting about how this is a great segment more of this guys more of this I mean come on where's the compassion it's encouragement I had meat spolen and my apartment's about to go burning

fire yeah my goal my point my my reason for the text messages to Mike my good morning and good afternoon text messages is I'm going to put a concert I'm going to put in an effort to become

one of the people that Mike texts regularly with. And I'm going to try to work to get to the point to where when I text Mike, hey, what's up? He's going to volunteer everything that's going on in his day. I will be the type of person that he will go, oh, man, my freezer went out, man. I took a dump.

They wouldn't take it. Damn. And we're going to have a conversation. Two things. One, I already am that to you. No. And you were that to me. Yes.

I can promise you there's not. anybody on the planet that I text more with than you. Really? Not even my wife. Wow. Secondly. And we don't text much. Secondly, that ought to tell you something.

What's the deal? I'm not in the text. Secondly, you're not exactly innocent in all this either. What am I? You go, listen, you say, how did it go? I find it like, yeah, it went great. You said, well, maybe I can see a video of your speech. And I'm like, well, here's a link.

I watched it. But you didn't reply. So I send you the link to my speech. crickets okay so now I'm like he hate I mean because obviously they introduced me like my whole career is basically the way I work for you I mean I'm not there without this you know my story with you and all that stuff so it's like I'm like man he ain't replying he hated it what like I've done

something wrong maybe I said something wrong of course did you all watch it Mike's commitment Commitment speech. It's commitment. So. It's on the YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the YouTube. Can you go to?

The YouTube. It's on the YouTube. It's a dirty YouTube. Is it Georgia Southern's handle? I honestly, I don't know the answer to that. Somebody sent me the link. It's like 18 minutes in. And it's great.

You did great. You did great. Did you like it? Yeah. I saw your teeth from the wide shot. It was incredible. It was hot up there. So everything was.

You saw his teeth. in the watch shop? Yeah, I knew it was Mike up there. The only way you'd get them all in there. All right. By the way, by the way, Dustin just texted me with an emoji. And our behind the scenes, our camera guy here and said that Mike could have put his deer meat if he burnt the house down.

He could have put the fridge in there to burn. That's true. That's a good point, Dustin. That's true. So, yeah. Listen, in all seriousness, though, like, that was like the honor of a lifetime for me to go do that thing. So, yeah, I'm glad you'd like.

to speech and I was just happy for you because I think that I know how proud you are from about you know that school and what it means to your life and to have them want you to come do that I mean and you went up there and you you knocked it out of the park yeah and then you you spent like what the rest of the day and afternoon evening just enjoying yourself and being around that environment you know yeah with all professors of mine from back in Did you go to the, what was the place you said you were going to meet them all at? Elson Breroyer. Did you go? Yeah. Did you see some graduates? Yeah. Yeah. That was a thing. It's funny because you guys know my wife. This is real quick. Hey, this isn't a racing show. And so we, we,

you know my wife. Like she's very thrifty with her with money and like, you know, she's very, you know, she manages the finances very well. And so I end the speech by saying if, I'll see it, Elson Brero tonight. And if I do, drink. her on me. And I sit down and I'm like, what the heck did I just say? And my phone starts buzzing immediately. And I'm like, there she is. Yeah. She's wondering, what did you just do? And how many people did you just promise buying drinks for? And I just, when I finally talked to her, I'm like, I was on stage for another two hours because they had to still hand out all the diplomas and all that stuff. Right. That takes a long time. And so when I talked to her, she goes, what was that

all about? And I said, I don't know. It wasn't in the, it wasn't in my speech. It was like this out of body experience. Like I wanted to just, I wanted to end on a high note, but I was like, graduates, I'm proud of you. You love you. But nobody was really reacting. So I'm like, keep going. Beers on me, boys.

And they were like, yeah. Real crowd pleaser. Yeah. All right. So how many did you have to buy? People are going to want to know. Well, there's four El Sombreros. I went to the only one that mattered to me, which is the one that I think they least go

to now. So that was, that was, there was that. I probably bought about six or seven big beers. And Elson Brer was known for having these gigantic beer glasses, right? And that was what we went to college on. I majored in big beer, but in Georgia Southern. And so that's what, either these big margaritas or big beers. And so I bought six or seven, which was fine.

What are you going to do? I was proud of him. I was in a moment, too. I ain't no telling what I was going to spend money on it. I was in a moment of weakness. So. We completely derailed that. Yeah.

Is there anything else you want to talk about? We should probably maybe talk about Kansas. Can you want to? Sure. I mean, yeah, I don't have a lot about it. But, I mean, it's a great race. I thought watching, I could ride on the roof cam or the in-car cam of Kurt's car trying to watch him pass Kyle Larson at the end for the rest of the race.

They was no need to cut away to any other camera. Every time they left that in-car camera trying to watch him try to work, get to the left recorder panel, I'm like, man, go back in there. That was awesome. I love that, I love that, you know, I guess one thing that I was happy about is, you know, that they can pass, you know, they can get up to the back of each other and they can. I know that there is dirty air, but I know that it's not perfect, but, you know, in other configurations, recent configurations that we've had over the last decade, the five car would have just been able to block with the spoiler and take away the air off a Kurt's car. and he wins the race, especially at that place right there. It's so hard to pass.

And you could watch Kurt working, work and work and work. And finally, he knew how to get to the five car and disrupt the five cars balance. Because Kyle Larson's talked about that. He kept bouncing off the wall. And it's really the air off of the car beside him actually sends his car up the racetrack and gets him tight. And so Kurt was doing that, and that was helping Kurt, allow, you know, be able to make the pass that you need to make. And I was just really happy about that. I think this car, the next-year car, has performed so well at the mile and a halfs,

better than I think any of us could have anticipated. We're all worried sick about what that means for the short tracks after the performance we saw at Martinsville. But otherwise, I think at the mile and a half's, road courses, this is going to be a fun year to be in the booth. So that would have been a great race to call that finally. and thought Jamie McMurray did a great job in the booth. He's a good balance for Clint. And I still always miss the crew chief strategy knowledge. But man, when it comes down to a battle like we saw to end of the race,

all I want to hear is from the drivers, and I thought those guys delivered. So pretty amazing to see Kurt keep winning. Right. You know, he's been in the sport, I think, the longest of any other driver. You know, all the vets, I think he's been around the longest, the most years. And so I think he's the last, maybe the last driver that was competed against my dad. I think he is.

And he's had some difficult weeks crashed a lot over the last several three or four races. Guy goes out there and can still get the job done. drove a great race. I know Denny and them guys are probably thrilled with the success of their team, and, you know, Denny's pretty open and honest about the ebb and flow of emotions in terms of performance.

When they're down, he comes to the media and he's open about it and frustrated about it. So pretty interesting watching that team develop and carve out their identity. I thought it was just a good race. Kansas is a great racetrack. Good barbecue out there. It's a great trip.

I like most everything about it. I say I saw a cool stat that said Kurt Bush has now won a cup race in six different numbers for five different teams and four different manufacturers. Pretty impressive. So, yeah, I know we do, you know, there's a lot of what-is out there,

but you have to wonder, had Kurt matured or had the ability to weather and withstand all of the things coming at him, when he won that championship at such a young age, age in just a few years into the sport. I wonder had he been able to maintain a stable situation professionally, you know, he'd be three, four, five-time champion.

I don't know. I think he knows that the possibilities on that are endless. He has a special talent that a lot of the – I said it on social media. He has this ability that a lot of guys don't have. There's great race car drivers sprinkled throughout the history of the sport. And a great race car driver can take any race car and get everything out of it. When a crew chief or owner puts a car on the racetrack, all he wants his driver to do is make that car go as fast as that car can go. And all the great race car drivers, that's what they do, and that's why they're great.

But only a very few can take a team over a period of time, six months, a year, two years, whatever, however long than there, and progressively improve that team. Now, you would think if it just happens once, well, what was it the driver? Maybe it was a crew chief, maybe it was a couple personnel changes or an engineer they hired that made this thing faster. But Kurt has done this over and over, and it's pretty impressive. I don't know, you know, I think he apparently gives great feedback. Apparently his feedback is really detailed.

but there's other things I think that he must be doing during the week that we're not privy to conversations he's having with his crew chiefs and engineers his owner about how to get better and time and time again he has been involved in teams that tend to always improve yeah I think that's a rare quality and a special one I wish I could name some of some of the other drivers that I think have that ability but It's a small group. Mike, I'm really excited to have Ally as a partner here at Dirty Mo Media. And they're helping us bring in some pretty incredible guests each week.

It's important to have allies in your career, in your life, professionally, personally. And anyways, we've got Doug Yates as a guest on the show this week. It's going to be pretty awesome to be able to hear his story. I didn't know that Doug, I mean, I guess I should have known. But Doug, looking at Robert Yates, his dad's life and the teams that he was involved in, Doug was a fly on the wall in a lot of these awesome situations. And I can't wait to get him in here and hear about these stories. And listen, this is one of those guests where you came to us and said, this is somebody that I want.

And, you know, I love it. As we started researching, man, there's a lot of things that we should have known, but we don't know. Can't wait to talk to me about that. And also there's some stuff that I don't even know if he's willing to talk about, but he's involved in stuff that's not just racing related. And I'm telling you, like, this is the best at what he does. This guy is legit, man. So, yeah, I can't wait.

Let's just get him on here. Doug Yates on the Dell Jr. Download. It was the best dressed award. I was sure. I was like, what should I wear? Really? Yeah. So how are you?

Good. Yeah, thank you for having you. Where'd you come from? I was across street. Yeah. So are you over there often? I'm always at the shop on the lakeside. Okay.

So you spend most of your time still in Moresville? Oh, yeah. Yeah, at our original engine shop. I mean, that's where I spend most days when I can in the engine. I know your original engine shop. Right. What do you mean by that? Well, so when we, well, the original shop was downtown, Charlottes, you know,

going towards the airport off Rosales Ferry Road, pretty rough, pretty rough place. We moved up here in 2003, and so that's where I'm. What's happening over there? So we build all the engines for all the Ford and Xfinity teams over there. Every single Ford. Yeah. Yep. Cup and Xfinity.

Yeah. So when we put our program together with Jack and the end of 2003, we started, you know, we did all of them from that point on. So can we talk about the boat? Yeah. All right. So, um, well, I'll tell you. So, uh, full disclosure. I knew his dad, you know, I knew his dad talked to his dad when I'd seen super, super,

super, super nice guy, but me and Doug never really talked a lot. And for whatever reason, right? We know a lot of the same people, but we never really spent much time on each other. So I didn't know. That's more him than you, just so you know. That's the way he would be with everybody. My guys ask me, you ever, do you think Junior will ever ask you to be on this show? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's a Chevrolet forward thing. I don't know. So I'm just shocked. So anyways, I think this is how this happened. So he has some ownership of a boat and the tart thought it would be great for the NBC booth and wives to go on a trip together and spend some time around each other and so we chartered his boat.

So the one just from a few weeks ago? Yes. And so this is recent. And through the whole, throughout the whole trip, they're going on and on about Doug and they're like, man, you know, you, you'd be surprised. And every time I talk to Clark, uh, Jeff Clark, who used to, Jeff worked for Doug on Robert Yates race teams and, uh, very, very much. And, uh, very time. And, uh, eventually came and worked on the number eight car for many years, Jack man and a gas can man at some points and just a all-around great guy. And he's always telling him and Doug are very close. And he's always like, man, you guys are more similar than you think and you should really talk to him. He's just awesome. And so I thought, I got to get him on the show. That's how we do it. That's how

I get to know you. I mean, if you're going to be on his boat, right? Yeah. Well, I've got some good stories about your dad because your dad had a boat, like a really nice boat. My dad had a little boat, but he loved it. You know, he loved doing that. But we were at a place called Chub Key last year. And they were telling me a story about Dale Earnhardt, Sr., being there on his boat. They loved coming down there, going fishing, brought Daniel Lawrence, all the guys on the crew down there, went fishing all the time.

And they were telling me this one story, I guess Larry Mack had him testing late. So he couldn't get in there. So there's no lights on the runway there. But he wanted to get in there. So everybody on the island parked their car and turn their headlights on. here comes your dad in and then Alan Jackson picked him up on his golf cart him and all the time. That's pretty cool stuff right there and the guys down in Chubb were telling me all this story so I was thinking about you. How many cars does it take to light up a runway?

Yeah, that sounds like some of the smuggling things that were happening out there. Are you sure that like Gary Ballou? I thought that was the coolest. I mean your dad is the baddest guy I've ever seen around. You know, I was there kind of I started my career in 1990 when I graduated. college right and your dad was already the intimidator right and so I was there as an engine tuner new guy you know watching your dad come up and I was around him my dad love your dad oh my gosh I mean he absolutely thought the world they they went back dirt racing back in Metroline and all that stuff my dad had a dirt car and um he loved him but I wasn't scared of your dad so 1990 southern 500

yeah I'm on the pit crew like holding the signboard and all that stuff and so old backstretched I'm in the bathroom, you know, getting ready for race, you know, relieved myself before the race. Your dad walks in and says, you boys ready? I thought it was God talking. I was shaking. At the urinal. Yeah, at the urinal. And he says, you better be. Something like that. I mean, that's what I heard, right? He went out and just just wore us out. But he's the man. I know your dad's history. I know the teams he was with, you know, he's going to be prevalent in this conversation. but I want to know about your experiences, especially as a very, very young boy,

you were privy to having experienced a lot of things around this sport with a lot of really, really cool characters that didn't really click in my head. I guess I didn't know anything about the Metralina car. So, like, tell me your first sort of memories growing up around racing. What kind of race cars are we talking about? Where were you spending your time at? I guess, you know, my earliest memories kind of around.

I'm probably six, seven years old. Right. But for you, when did it all kind of start clicking? Yeah, so, you know, my dad was at home in the Moody when I was born in 67, and shortly thereafter, about three years after that, Ford pulled out of racing, and my dad had built a race winning engine for Junior Johnson, so he kind of got to know Junior. So Jr. said, hey, Robert, I want you to come up here and run my engine shop. So my dad was driving back and forth, back and forth, and finally we'd moved up there, right,

about a mile and a half down the street from Junior's shop. and I was about four or five years old back then and he would, you know, my dad would work 24-7. I mean, you know how it was back then. And he just worked all the time. And so he'd come home for dinner and take me back to work with him. And that's the only time I got to hang out with him. And I had caught there and he'd had me a sort, nuts and bolts, whatever.

And, you know, Junior would come in in the middle of the night from Coon hunting and, you know, pat my dad on the back, said, boy, we're going to go win this race. And, you know, so just hanging around Junior Johnson and being, right there in the street. And then on Saturdays, we would go down to the house and Flossie would cook breakfast, you know, countryhand biscuits for everybody every Saturday morning. So my goal or what I thought like normal life was is being a car owner and having the shot, you live right next to your shop.

You know, that's what I did. But that's what I thought it was. But my very first memory of the race was going to North Wiltsboro. My mom took me to qualify in there. And I know you love North Wilkespril. So this is a cool story. So here we go. You know, my dad's down there obviously working.

And so we sit on the front row of the concrete bleachers still there. And sitting there watching Qualifying and chicken bones, beer cans. I'm like, wow, this is it. This is racing. It's what's about. But just hanging out with him when I could. He would, you know, he worked all the time. But in the wintertime, he liked to ride like motorcycles, dirt bikes and stuff.

And he would put me on the back and we'd ride up through the holler and do stuff like that. I think he just needed ballads. you know so he put me on there but but it just you know growing up around junior and and all the all those guys that were there um and then bobby alison was a driver so right away bobby alison was my hero this is the number 12 coat car number 12 coat car 1972 they won 10 races finished second 12 times and my dad as he would tell blew up the rest of them finished second to richard pay and the points but him and Bobby had a great connection and later

when my dad was struggling with cancer the very last year we had a birthday party for him at the shop and Bobby was there and Bobby was told the story and I never heard this he said that Junior wouldn't talk to him he said that and Herb wouldn't talk to him

but my dad would talk to him so my dad and him got close but if they wanted to redo his contract they went through my dad and go get his contract then that's just the way Junior was Yeah so I've read some books about Junior and I know Junior was

the boss right you didn't he was the one that you called the shots if he said come down pit road darrell waltcher whoever it was they better get their tail down pit road right and i'm right in the middle kale won three championships in a row with uh with junior johnson in 76 77 and 78 and right in the middle of all that they're having they're dominating the sport fast kale didn't do something or kale said something about the car and junior in quotes in the media after the race is like he can go drive somebody else's car he can talk he he he can he he gonna stop talking about my car like that and go that's the way he was that's the way he was and he he was a you know he was the guy right he was a legend and um it was his way or the highway and when my dad left there you know

74 75 by we lived there for four years and my mom finally looked at my dad said look here's the deal you can live here and work here as long as you want I'm going back to charlotte where I'm from and So it didn't take long for him to leave. But when he left, Junior never talked to him from that moment until the end of his career. Wait, at a spite? That's the way you were with him or against him. And that's the way, kind of I grew up that way too a little bit. And like when Jeff Clark, my best friend, he was on our team.

But when he left, go, work Rusty and then you, we didn't talk for a long time because that's, you know, my dad raised me really tough. And I know your dad did too. and I think he did that because he knew how hard this is, you know, how hard it is to have a place here in a sport and earn it. But that's the way Junior was, man. You were with him or against him. He never talked to him. And Junior was my dad's hero.

Even through all that, he really, really looked up to him. And later, after my dad retired, after 2007 season, he got a farm up there, a ranch up in North Wiltsboro, 600 acres, and had a steel on it. It was really cool. and uh he but that was kind of because he had such fond memories to live in there and and uh all those things and junior was one of his heroes so they figured they eventually got to communicate well they they did talk you know i mean they after after my dad retired and you know junior would have those

breakfasts where all those guys old timers would come up there and tell all those racing stories and stuff and my dad would do that with him a little bit yeah yeah they got past that but there's something about when you walk in the when you walk in that garage you know you you got a you know you There's no being on both teams. You've got to pick your team. So how old were you when you were in junior's shop? Like you're talking about six, seven, eight? Yeah, five, six, seven years old.

Do you ever recall having conversations with Junior Johnson? Because it sounds like he doesn't talk to Bobby, and that's his driver. You know, you're either with him or without him. I mean, for a six-year-old, I would be somewhat intimidated by this guy. I don't know. I don't really remember talking to junior that much, but I love Flossie. And Flossie was, we were tight. She's bringing biscuits.

I mean, you don't talk to her, right? Exactly. Are those breakfasts as legendary as they have always heard? I mean, like, I've heard about the Junior Johnson breakfasts and the biscuits and all that stuff. I mean, and that there was never, they never half-assed that. Like, that was always the best thing your Wilkes County had going, right? Yeah. Is that true?

That's true. I mean, I wouldn't take part of any of those, the old timers talking in those breakfasts. But for me as a kid, you know, having breakfast at Flossy's house and junior's house, that was just like what we did on Saturday. Yeah. And now, looking back, it's like, wow, that's cool. one of the things my time in the sport, I just love that the time that I grew up in the sport from where it was to where it is today. I just think it's awesome. You experienced a lot of

different layers. And my wife was asking me the other day, she's like, man, you're posting all these old pictures. Why are you doing that? He's going through something. And I was like, I'm like, no, I'm like, this is silly, but you ever watch Forrest Gump, the movie, right? And he lived the life of 10 men, right? He was in all these different places and experienced all these things. And I told Amy, I said, I said, I feel like my life, is that way. There's been these giant chapters that were enough for one person, right, to experience in one life. And I've gotten, I've been kind of pulled and plucked and shoved into all these other spaces, right? I think you had the same experience. The decades of change in the sport, you really

got to experience, and the personalities. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the personalities were bigger than life. And you were one of those guys coming up. You just, you know, and that's what, you know, the driver is your hero. That's the person who sets the tone, your dad, you, Davey Allison, amazing guy, right? I mean, American hero. And it's just so cool to be around those guys. I mean, Rusty Wallace was one of those guys that, I didn't really like Rusty because he beat us a lot, but he was one of those guys. If you weren't on his team, he was hard to like. Oh, man. His guys loved you. Exactly. But, yeah, he got, and him and dad were great friends, and I always kind of, like, Rusty would kind of rub me the wrong way a little bit every once in a while. Rusty spun dad. And,

at Rockingham. They were racing for the championship. It was the year Rusty won the championship. And there was a wreck at Rockingham. Rusty got into Dad or spun him out or something. And Dad got clipped by somebody, ripped the whole back off his car. And I was like, damn it! And, you know, nobody spins that out, right?

He's the one spinning everybody else out. But anyways, Metrolina. The Metraline car, I'm curious about that. Because I love Metrolina. I never really got to experience that as a kid. It was a little bit before my time. But I'm infatuated with my grandfather, Robert Gee, had a car there and all that.

So what do you remember about that? I don't know if you don't like what I'm going to tell you here. Okay. But we're all, this is a table of honesty. You can lay it out there. So my dad and his best friend, guy named David Gray, they started this dirt car. My dad was working at Home of Moody, working 100 hours a week, and somehow I found time to go race at Metroline.

It was a Camero. And so they raced at Metroline. Who drove? Dom Bumgarner. That was a guy's name that drove it. And they were so proud. They said that, you know, they're the only guy that could beat Ralph Earnhardt. Oh.

And they said that, you know, their stories. You know how everybody's got their side of the story. But they were really proud that they race against your granddad. They race against your dad. And they said they won their share of them. And working at Homer Moody, you know, it's a forward factory back, right? So Ralph Moody and John Holman are really good to my dad. They saw he was going places, right?

And so they said, all right, I know you're running a Chevrolet, but if you went in the next race you win, we want competition proven on the side of that car. That's the only thing we owe us. But they raced and did that until finally just, you know, ran out of steam, ran out of energy. But when I was growing up, you know, at our house, at my grandma's house, my mama's house,

it was either racing or wrestling. Wrestling. NWA. Oh, yeah, there you go. That was, you know, Rick Flair, Wahomick-Mown. So, you know, you're over there on Sunday afternoon. You're talking about the race on Saturday. night in metro lena and ralph dail earnhart stick elliott dom gum gum gardener or you're watching

wrestling so that that was kind of how my mom said my dad is a son of a baptist preacher so he's the last of nine kids from baddest preacher so i kind of had both sides covered yeah did so your dad um was with was nine kids nine youngest of nine kids and his brothers and sisters he had two brothers his twin brother Richard actually ran our business for a long time at robbery eight's racing great guy amazing guy and his older brother was a preacher and his sisters were all missionaries or married preachers and so he was uh in fact when he won when they won the championship of bobby in 83 it was the miller car but they had quaker state sponsor so he would tell his mom and it was a quaker state car you know because he was she was cool with that you know and right but uh but it was uh you know it was it was a great

upbringing. I mean, back then we didn't travel the racetrack. You know, kids couldn't go to the track, right? I mean, you, so I say with my grandma, grandpa, and their family quite a bit. And we're watching it and stuff. But, but the Metro line of stuff, you know, I told Dave Gray, I talked to him before this show. I said, I want to talk about you on this show. Yeah. Those cars, but they were, they, they did that. And they're all about racing, man. My dad was a, people know him as an engine guy, but he loved working on race cars. It springs and shocks and bars and, man, he just loved it. He loved it. Yeah. After he left juniors, what's the next step? Yeah, so he kind of took a little bit of an interim.

He worked for a guy named Parky Knoll, and then ultimately ended up at DiGuard with Darrell Walter. What was the break? What was he doing? He was just doing engine work for a local guy here, local engine shop. Build race engines? Kind of some race engines, but nothing big time. My dad was a really good machinist as well, so he could kind of do it all.

I mean, he liked the machining part of it, actually better than the assembly. one part he felt like that was kind of the final thing but he did that for about a year and then he got hooked up with digard and and and darrell waltrip and had a lot of success so the digard deal was so interesting because you know you know these people better than i do because you live you lived it with them but your dad was in the digar deal a long time he out he outlasted dw he was in the middle of all that muck when all that was going down with with darrell and his contract and all that. Darrell was interesting back then. I feel like that Darrell was interesting because he came in with building his own cars and he was a winner with his own cars. And did your dad build those motors?

So he, no, not those. Not those motors. I don't remember who was building those engines. But he was cocky. Right. Oh yeah. You know, and he, in the late 70s, like he's not, I don't, I don't know where DW got that cockiness from because I don't remember I don't I know he was he was a talker and he was a broadcaster and all those things and he certainly knew how to sell himself but I don't remember ever him having this sort of well I I deserve this or I'm entitled to to what I think I deserve but in those moments with with Bumgarner or not Bumgarner but with Dygard and the gardeners there was a why was that so difficult for Daryl to settle in it was a good team right uh they

They were getting better and better. They ended up winning a championship with Bobby. Yeah. Right? They become a championship team. Why couldn't he settle in there? You know, I think it was an interesting time. And some of that time, that's the part of my growing up where I don't remember every single detail about it.

But I probably remember more of the Bobby Allison Dygard days because that was when I was around helping shop a lot and stuff. But my dad would tell stories about Daryl and they won a lot of races, settled on a lot of polls. And you're right. I think they were all trying to prove themselves, right, with them. buddy parrot and all that crew and um darrell just you know he got the nickname jaws for for a reason right and and he was he was good at that but he just he just saw that the junior deal was a better opportunity for him for sure and it was it turned out to be in the end and and but they had a lot success but my dad and darrell actually had some animosity through that whole thing and i'll tell

you a story as a young kid and this is kind of a moment for me i was like man i'm not sure if i want to be part of this NASCAR thing or not. We went to Bristol. My dad took Bristol one night, just me and him, and I think I was riding with the crew. And back then, Bristol, after the race, the fans could come down on the infield, right? And they run like fifth that night. Darrell was complaining about the engines and all night at Bristol, right? And my dad's like, well, I was just set up and this and that.

Well, anyway, they were pretty, he was pretty fired up. And I'm there after the race in this fan. throws a beer can and hits my dad with it. Why? Because I guess he heard that Daryl's complaining and back and forth. And I'm sure he was pretty drunk about that time. So anyway, my dad commences to beating the crap out of this guy and a fan. And it was a little justified, but I mean, like, you know, and I'm a young kid.

I'm 12, 13 years old this time, maybe younger. Like, man, I don't know about this racing. I'm going to church on Sunday and watching this. go down and my dad's been this guy off and I don't know about this NASCAR thing but it was it it was a memory that I won't forget you know what I mean yeah but but after shortly after they quit allowing the fans come down could you imagine them letting the fans out and just say just go down and see see whatever well now they'll hunk it over the fence I mean they don't need to be down there to get a beer to you that's Jeff Gordon right but it was a it was an

interesting experience but I mean that's that's kind of how far back you used to go to I know that we know Robert Yates or even Buddy Parrott as, you know, some of the best people that, at their position, at their roles, they were some of the greatest. And I know at that time in the late 70s, maybe Daryl and even Robert and all them, they didn't know who they really were, what they were capable of. They were still this sort of budding, growing new team. And Daryl wasn't leaving the 28 Havling Ford. You know, he was leaving a car and a team that, you know, he thought, I'm going on to this. Junior won three in a row just a few years ago. 76, 77, 78.

I mentioned, he's like, I'm going to the best car in the garage, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Explain, though, a little bit more because I, like, so there was a contentious contract negotiation. Darrell wanted out of his deal. Was it very public? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Very public. Silly, silly. And so Darrell was the, there's proof of this, so he can't, he can't chew my ass about this. But Darrell would get out of the car when the motor would break and be blunt. But if we can get these. motors just last and he would be and it wasn't uncommon to see other drivers too i told you about kale talking about his car and junior having to say look you know you better you shut that up but darrell would get out of the car and and if the motor broke he would say the you know the damn motor's got

to stop blowing up what the hell you know you i would read you read the quotes and you're like man that's why was he so aggressive that's pretty harsh because yeah because you know we I mean, we all put our heart and soul in this thing. You don't want to ever let him back down, you know, but he was. Well, that was, that became, that was the norm then in the late 70s, drivers being blunt, drivers, you know, if I, if this thing is stay together, we win. I win. I had this race won.

Right. Dam motor blew up. Right. The etiquette and, you know, driver's tones have changed quite a bit since then. Now, if kale, if kale blew up, he'd get out and say the starter fell off, knocked a hole in an old pan. He would. when Wadale was his injury.

Yeah. They had it playing now. But I'll tell you what, later in life when my dad was going through his deal with cancer, you know, I kind of go back and forth a little bit. You know, I knew him and Daryl still had that be from back then, you know, always carried that forward until 2017. Oh, wow. And so, and Daryl was an announcer, so kind of made it tough when we had a hard day,

you know, kind of take that stuff personal. But my dad's wish was like, man, I just, I want to make sure. nobody's I'm good with everybody before I'm gone yeah and so I was at Atlanta and uh darrell always parked right next to me there in a motorhome lot and I went over there one Saturday morning I said darrell you know told them about what was going on and I said man really mean a lot if you guys could talk and darrell picked up the phone my dad was at his ranch and they talked for an hour I don't know what they said but I know they both were smiling after after that was done and I don't Yeah, and I was really happy about that.

I mean, it really made me feel good about it. Because that was, you know, it was a hard deal. They're both, like I said, they're all trying to prove themselves in a sport, trying to make it. And it fell apart. But, you know, like said, it turned out okay down the road with Bobby and stuff like that. Between Bobby, though, there was a couple of the drivers. And I know in the notes of our preparation, there was a potential moment where your dad was trying to get Gardner to hire dad. Yeah, yeah.

Is that true? Well, that's actually, I mean, that was the first time. And then the second time was when we put the ADA car together. And that was when it really, really Ford was. Wow. Yeah. So that, well, first, let's go to the first one. So it's around 1981.

Darrell's gone to juniors. Yep. Y'all are, y'all hired Rudd. Yep. And still got the, it's an 88 Gatorade car. and Robert at some point goes to Gardner, Bill Gardner? Yeah, Bill Gardner. And says, I need you to, I want you to meet with Dale Earnhardt.

And Gardner said that dad was too rough looking. He didn't want dad's, dad wasn't polished enough. Visually. He may not have been wrong about that part, but I don't know why that would be the criteria in which to hire a driver, right? Yeah, yeah. So that, was that, was that company supposed to, is that kind of like a policy? Did the optics matter that much? So Bill Gardner was a businessman from Connecticut, right?

I mean, he was really, you know, Bill and his wife, Chris, I mean, great. Always really good to me, but, you know, it was kind of fell apart there. But in his brother, Jim, ran the operation here. And that's locally. But, yeah, it was, I guess that they felt like they were. And we ended up going to Ricky Rudd as a rookie deal, or they did. And it was tough. I mean, it just, man, it was rookie program.

are hard as you guys know. Some of them work out great. Most of them are yeah take some time. Well, why was your dad the broker of that conversation though? He's you know the engine builder. I think just like back with juniors. I mean my dad had a way of I mean he was always just wanted to do the best job at everything and he always tell me like look if you clean the bathroom and do a good job you don't get the opportunity to do the next job and he would build the engine as good and then he would help with the team and it's help with setups. So he always ended up being that guy and and more than just the engine builder. Yeah.

And so he was kind of a go-to person and a voice of reason. So how do y'all get, how does he get team back up with Bobby? Yeah, so obviously Bobby and him had a lot of history there with junior and a lot of success and the deal with Ricky was just going bad. And I remember his little kid. I mean, my dad would, we would go to work and come home and drive around the car. He said, man, I think we need to hire Bobby. What do you think?

I'm like, of course, yeah. I mean, why not? So he kind of, I was a sounding board, not that I would provide a lot of input. And then ultimately they put the deal together with Bobby to drive in 82. And what a success story that it was. I mean, started out winning the Daytona 500. A bumper fell off. My dad told me he was not that good of a welder.

He's like, look, it wasn't intentional, but I wasn't a very good welder. We should probably give some context behind that. That's a, is that controversial? So the Daytona 500, 1982, the crew chief is Gary Nelson? Yep. Your dad's building motors. I mean, it's a fast car. And if you look at the body on the car and everything about it, I mean, it's built for Daytona and specifically to go down there and win that race. The bumper falling off probably helped things in one way or another, but I don't think it was an intentional. We need this thing to fall off at some point. But that's what people accused of, right? Yeah, it was a bumper gate. And look, this thing was this bumper was a chrome. I mean, this thing, I don't know, weighed. It was heavy, right? It wasn't intentional, but it did fall off and they did win the race and the thing was fast from the start, like you said.

It was fast. And I think if anything yet, it's a little lighter, but also a little bit of drag, the bumper calls a little bit of drag back there that's gone. Anytime a bumper comes off a car, even today, NASCAR wants you to put the bumper cover back on because it's an advantage when the bumper comes off. I can probably think about two or three times in my career when I got passed by a car without a bumper on it late in the race and I'm going, damn, I want my bumper to fall off. Yeah, that's right. But, you know, it was a, it's just fun to dream. It's just fun to imagine that there was some conspiracy to it when there's probably not as much as we all wish there was. Is that right?

And I think they went on to win Daytona in July that year as well, with the same, you know, with the bumper. With the bumper home. Yep. So they were on their way. I mean, it was a great team. And they were. What are you, how are you at that point? So I'm about 15.

Yeah. You know, when are you employed? When are you starting to get paid a little bit of money for what you're doing? Man, we worked. That's all we did my whole life. I mean, you know, we grew up pretty humble beginnings off Central Avenue. And when I was 10 years old, I had 10 yards I cut. Okay. And I was just, you know, and then I would go to the shop, clean the shop. And every Saturday, you know, me and my uncle Richard, he'd come pick me up, go to the shop, clean it top to bottom, like, you know, do a really nice job. And then started tearing on engines, washing parts,

honing blocks when I was like 13 years old. You home blocks in 13? Yep, home my first block when I was 13 and on my own. But I had like the best teacher in the whole world. Do you remember what that block was for? So it was a General Motors. It was a GM program for DiGuard. Yeah. Yeah.

So it was sometime right around the time in between Darry and Bobby. And man, my dad was, I mean, you know, he would make me do the toughest jobs. But he really taught me ground up and it was cool. It was really cool. What are some of the, like give us an example of what was critical. critical when he's like, hey man, I'm going to get you to do this job or work on this block or whatever. Explain to me like what set you apart, what set him apart in the detail. Yeah, probably, I mean, number one, just repetition. You know, we build a lot of engines for a lot

of people and had a lot of practice, you know. But my dad was tough on me. I mean, he wanted, if I didn't hold a wrench right, he was on me. Right. You know, that's not how you hold a torque crinch. Let me show you how to use a torque wrench. Here's how you, here's how you use hamper. I mean, so he was really hard on that side. And, you know, growing up was kind of tough because my dad wasn't, you know, there a lot, you know. So when I had the opportunity, I really wanted to make him proud, you know, so I was always, he's my hero, and I'm trying to really make him proud. And actually, the times I did best when he kind of went away a little bit and let me do my thing.

And Raymond Fox, Jr., he was the one of really kind of helped me learn how to build engines and let me do. things. Like, I worked for tearing on engines, washing parts for about 10 years before it ever let me put an engine together. I actually called my mom. I said, mom, you got to tell dad, I need to put an engine together. I've been doing all this stuff. But really, it was just, you know, building great engines is all about the details. What's the emotion or the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you've built a motor and you send it out the door and you've got to watch it go perform? Oh, man. That first one I ever built and put it on the dino. I was just a nervous wreck. Yeah, I guess you get to put it on the dino for a little bit.

Yeah. Let's make sure it's going to do everything it's supposed to do. But I'll never forget the first engine I built, starting to finish. Um, 1991. We won Charlotte with Davy and, and that, that was like my first engine. Really? Built the whole thing. Really? And I'm like, we had a party at Jeff's house. You know, the whole nine yards. It was like, man, I have made it now. Yeah. And little do you know, there's always the next one, right? But it was, it was a cool feeling. I mean, I just, you know just a lot of pride i mean you know how how it is when you're really hands on doing something like that but um it's that's what i'll love to do what about when they fail who it hurts and i and i and i hate to use this analogy because i know it sounds wrong but it is it is almost like a death in the

family that kind of feeling it's like man it's like just you let people down yeah you you you just the last thing you want to do is see that thing not make it to the end and and uh look the life of engine builder is kind of hard, you know, because it's, you lose way more and you win, as you know, just in this sport in general. But you don't want to let him back down, first of all. Oh, I got a, I'm going to have some dumb questions here. So, but you guys are the best at building engines. And you're talking about its attention to detail. So I got two questions. One is, when did you realize that your dad had something different? There was something special about the way he built engines. And two is, I want to know, I know you're not going to give away trade

secrets but like attention to detail okay well what are the details like where do you guys find all this horsepower yeah with that i know you're not going to tell me but give me something no no i think i think when my dad went to you know they had the success of bobby won the championship he then built richard pettys 200th wind engine 199 at dover 200 at aton i'm like that's that's pretty awesome right and that's when you realize oh he's the man he's that's that's up there that's up there you know that's up there but really when it really started to come to me is when he went to work for reneer lunday and really took over the ford program and took a program that was just kind of getting going and really with davy allison really started setting that on the right path and back then so everybody

built their own engines back then so if there's 40 cars there's 40 engine builders and so when i started when i graduated college in 1990 you know we built our own engines had her own cars You know, we own three engines, six race cars, but we came up with, and you could modify the parts as much as you wanted to. There was no templates on the cylinder heads and stuff like that. So we took a stock Ford racing engine, welded up the ports, moved the valves, moved the spark plug. And it took about three months to process the set of heads. You got to weld them, heat treat them, machine them, et cetera. And that cylinder head was 50 horsepower better than anything else out there.

Wow. That's what I'm talking about. That was creativity. and that was 1990. And all of a sudden, you know, Jake was our crew chief. And we're kind of, we have good engines. We just don't have it all put together right now. And then when Larry McGrindles came to workforce in 1991, with that power and with Larry's setups and team, man, we are on our way.

So where does the idea, where's the idea seated to even go with those cylinder heads and start sort of like thinking so far outside the box? And how confident are you that that's even going to work? Well, it took a lot of iterations. but my dad was always, he would always say you win with advantages. That was his thing. You always have to look, search, work. And he also was a guy who, you know, you're going to beat somebody because you're working

Friday night when they're out on a date with a girlfriend. And that's what we did. I mean, that's all we did is just work, work, work. And you just start thinking about, you really kind of have to, without sounding a little weird, you kind of put yourself inside the engine. You think about how the combustion process works, how the airflow works. you want to get more air in the engine, you want to burn it faster, and you want to reduce a friction in the engine. And those are the main two things about it building engines.

Increase the airflow and reduce the friction, and that's the things you work on. And at that time, I mean, he had, you know, Larry Wallace was a cylinderhead guy, really famous guy, he had his own engine company for a while. James Luter was our machinist, Vernon Hubbard. I mean, it was a really small group of guys, and we just got after it. The advantage that you're talking about was absolutely apparent for many years. As NASCAR starts to cut the opportunities of creativity and limit your ability to be able to craft the cylinder head the way you wish and all those things, as those things are sort of stripped away, how difficult did it become to be able to really set yourself apart and continue that sort of standard or that expectation that your dad or you had for the motors,

y'all built. Yeah, so that's a great question. I mean, we, you know, that cylinder had really started us going. And when I started working there for my dad, we were making 600 horsepower. And right away through the cylinder is 650. And then we, the oil pan was a mess. And, and, and, and what do you mean? It was, so when you'd run the engine, all the oil would stay in the pan, you know, and it just causes windage. And, and it's just beating up the crank. And, and so we figured out to, uh, to put a vacuum to each of the sumps and to seal the engine. And that was another, you know, 25 horsepower. And so next thing you know, man, we're making 650, 700, 750.

And we would do all this stuff. Like, it'd always be like Friday night at 7 o'clock. The weather's getting good, you know, and you're working hard. And we were just coming up with things that, I mean, it was, it was crazy. We were at Michigan one time with Davey, and we had a rear seal, real main seal leak in the engine. And I took it over to Jack's. trailer he had an engine stand in his trailer and changed their rear main seal and put it back in and Dan Ford from Hendry came by and he asked Norman our uh normal question issue he said Norman I mean

you don't have a backup engine he said yeah but that one only makes 700 so I mean we put you know put the engine back in went out and won the race and it was just it was just coming so fast and and we were just you know my dad would always start at the start at the airbox and work on every single part to the tailpipes. Yeah. And start all over again. And that's what we did. And it was really, it was really fun.

It was really cool. I mean, there's so many times I would call him. You know, he, I didn't leave the shot before 7 o'clock. The first 10 years I worked there. It was like, or we're on a road going to race, right? Drive back and forth. But I would call him. Man, we made five more horsepower.

We made 10 more horsepower. And that was the relationship we had. And he pushed me, like there's plenty of times where we were slamming doors. and, you know, getting on each other, but we made each other better. And it was really cool. And I think you told Jeff that you thought he was my brother. Uh-huh.

And I never called him dad. I never called him dad around the shop because I wanted people to, I wanted to earn my respect. People, I had to earn it. So I'd always come Robert. So I think people thought that they were. I always had to remind myself that you were his son

because y'all were so similar, equal. And, you know what I mean? Had I maybe experienced, NASCAR in the early 80s and late 70s a little differently maybe I would have been able that would have been imprinted on my mind he loved that by the way as you can imagine but it was it was cool we just had fun doing it and then I love working with him and he he really let me do the engine thing and then he focused on the cars and the team and yeah working with larry mccrennels and Todd parrot and all those guys yeah as an engine builder in the sport I imagine you've heard this pretty

creative stuff out there. I know, you know, for example, when Sterling was winning those races at Dayton and so forth, that there was a lot of rumors about how they were getting some power. And one of the things that I kept hearing was that they were sucking air through the valve cover studs, right, in the heads. So they drill, Mike, they would, to help Mike understand, and you can tell me whether there's any truth to it, but the stud that holds the valve cover on, they drill a hole through that into the valley or into the intake and suck air that way. And so they could turn, you know, they could figure out a way to seal that off to where it, it could pass tech, you know, and they could, they wouldn't be able to see it. NASCAR wouldn't see it.

It could be some wax involved. I'm not sure. So the wax, yeah, go out there and heat, heat would melt the wax. Is this that Morgan McClure number four, Kodak car? Yeah. It sounded different, didn't it? Like, it, like, the car, the motor did sound different than all the other cars. It did. It might whistle if you were standing next to it. Well, they had to pit about five laps before anybody. Yeah. So, I mean. So that is pretty.

I thought it was great. I actually tried it in my late model motor. I'm thinking, well, if it works, we had these little two-dural carburetors, you know, and they weren't, you're trying to get all the air and you could into the thing. And, and so I had a, I had a, there's a, there's a plug on the back, on the top of the intake in the back right behind the carburetor. and so I drilled a hole in that plug, and I drill the hole, and I could turn the plug to where it would, you know,

line all the holes up to be able to get the air, suck air through that plug. And then I could turn it and it stopped because it would whistle. You could hear, you could faintly hear like the sound of that. What was the ultimate result? Yeah, how much power do you, man? I have no idea. I didn't put my stuff on a dino.

I'm just like a, I would just, we would just jet it. We knew we had to put more fuel in it, so it must be pull more air. Right, right. It was working. It was working. Okay, so you use the Morgan McClure example as like some creative things to do towards the engine. What are some of the other things you might have heard or you might have thought about doing or?

And my dad was always, he told me, he said, look, stop thinking about that stuff. Don't, don't, I know it's out there. It's tempting. Don't think about it because, look, if you get caught cheating one time, you're a cheater. You're a cheater. And your entire career, that's what people are going to remember right there. And he said, don't think of it. but just focus on the basics, and this thing will all come back around.

You know, just, but Runt was pretty creative, right? Runt Pittman was. He was building the motors on the four car. He was a four car. And what I had heard is, you know, they start drinking beer up there about four o'clock in the afternoon. At Morgans. And so everybody has a little bit more courage.

Of course. Yeah. And everybody's a badass until you had to go load up and go to Daytona, right? And so we, you know, we tried some of those things, of course. But we never, we never did that. I mean, we, some of the things like back in the day, you would have floating pieces in the manifold, in the intake manifold. So on a restrictor plate engine, you know, got the restrictor plate, four holes, and you put this cluster down below it, right? What's it looked like?

So it has like four tubes. There's a big tube in the center and then four holes, and it was all this single piece of block of aluminum. And so we said, okay. And then NASCAR had a stop sign gauge where we put it in the top of the manifold where it has to sit below that gauge, right? the gauge has to go in there so this cluster sitting down there so we tack one we make one tack it in and we're running you know running running running next thing you know this engine picks up like 25 horsepower I'm like what heck let turn it off hear this thud think like that's weird so go in there check it well the welds came loose like that's interesting let's run it again so anyway when that thing

when the vacuum the delta pressure hits that that thing pops up to the top of that plate and man and she takes off. Like, oh, this is good. Yeah. This is good. And I know Hendrick had some deal with a, you know, some way to temperature, like a thermostat on it where it released it and all this stuff. Interesting.

But we, you know, we went back and forth, back and forth. One time going through tech at Daytona, we changed manifold three times because we weren't sure whether we run it or not. And we decided not to run it. And then they had this huge wreck. And it's like, all right, well, we got in the wreck. And it's like, well, glad we didn't do that. But there's all kinds of things back then.

I mean, it was crazy. I mean, we would make all kinds of, we had a CNC machine before anybody else did. So we were making all kinds of different inserts and tubes. And it was pretty creative. Just for the intake itself. Just for intake. Yeah, I think, so you know Richie Gilmore.

And so Richie Gilmore helped, Richie Gilmore is part of the Hendrick and Chevrolet engine program. Derek Cope's Daytona 500 win. Richie, jump. Oh, yeah. Richie's in pit road jumping up down with a purulator suit on. I didn't know that. Yeah.

So, I mean, he's been, he's been a part of some pretty fast race cars, and he was a part of the engines that I won all my races with at Talladega and Daytona. And I know that a lot of the pace that we were able to. Richie's awesome. Yeah. So intakes. We had this one. I won three of the four in a row at Talladega with the same engine.

It won July Daytona. So, like, we had the same engine. And you married the intake and the, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and the heads and everything to get. So all that stuff would race, we just rebuild it and go again. And we had one motor that was a special engine. You marry everything together and it just works, right?

You know what I'm talking about. You kind of get that, you find that set of heads and that intake that just works so well together. Every time we were going to Daytona, Talaidea, Tony Senior, and Tony Jr., would make sure that that engine number was the one we were going to have in our car. Oh, yeah.

And I know that, you know, I don't know exactly what I wish I knew. I'd tell you right now, But I know that there was a lot of ingenuity in that intake from Gilmore's history and all the years of working with Hendrick and everything. Yeah, Richie is one of the best for sure. I mean, it brought a little bit of heat. I mean, like, you know, you were mad at Jimmy Spencer for so long because of, you know, people making accusations that NASCAR is like, you know, letting you run a different plate and this, that and the other because you were on a tear at those plate races. But you're saying that engine was just. Yeah, I mean, you know, the 15 car, Michael, his cars ran good too.

So, I mean, there were more than one good engine. but my motor, that motor was we wanted that motor every damn time we were going to Daytona Tallah. Crew Chiefs are big about writing them numbers down too. They are. Yeah, they know exactly every, the car rayer, the intake man, all the block. Yeah. But look, I love the Daytona 500. That's been from the time I started off, my dad, all the way up.

So my goal is to be good at Daytona, right? So we won the 92 Daytona 500 with Davey. We won the 96 with DJ. We won 2,000 with DJ. And then here you come. and man you put a damper on it. From then until 2009, you won everything. That's an interesting point because you would have an interesting vantage point being the competition,

is that when the Earnhardt and Childress and Andy Petrie sort of got together and formed that RAD program, what was your impression of that? Because that really did pay benefits to them, right? Total frustration. I mean, we were, you know, like I said, we were on a pace like the same. like the election every four years we're going to win the Daytona 500 right and and then here they come with that program and and you and Michael and man we were we we really struggled I mean it was it was tough for us and it was just frustrating because you know we work on the engine work on the car you know just

that process but we just couldn't catch up and you guys dominated for many years there do you know why like do you know what they were doing now you know in hindsight where they were just well obviously they had a great engine we just learned about and I know they had great race cars and great race car drivers and and there's something about you know you can have a great engine and a great car but you got to have a great driver and and and you were one of the best ever on play races and man it was it was tough for us we um there was i'll tell you not only were the motors um some of the best engines in the garage at the time but tony senior's the crew chief on eight car and um slugger labby is the crew chief on the 15 and they would be in competition with each

other on out you know out cheating each other so you know the 15 car would come down pit road on the first pit stop and slugger would pull 10 rounds out of the back ain't no way it's passing heck but he dropped the car as low as he could now Tony senior's like well damn I was only gonna do five that ain't that's egregious I'm gonna have to do 10 you know and so and that was going on if that was going on during the pit stops that you know imagine what was happening in during the week you know the 15 The team shop was a half mile down the road or a quarter mile down the road.

But, oh, what did you hear they did to the rear spoiler? Oh, is that what they going to do? Well, we're going to do it. But back then, there was so much creativity in the cars and the engines. But the cars itself was huge. So my dad let me run the team for one year. It didn't work out so well. But all we worked on was plate racing.

And that's when Elliot Sattler was driving our 38 car. And we sat on three or four poles in a row at Talladega. But the car was, that car was really cool. It was really, we couldn't finish a race. I mean, it would be upside down about every. Oh, yeah. You all did have fast cars. But we sat on some poles there and we just love Daytona, but it takes everything.

We've never won a 500 without a great engine and a great car and a great driver. You know what I mean? It just takes all of it. But back then, you could you could spend hours in a wind tunnel, hours on the dino and really make a difference. Now it's so tight. And the race, and in my opinion, and you know this way better than me, but it's, it's, it's, very manufacturer specific, right? And if you have the numbers, we've been very fortunate with Ford to have the numbers.

And I think that's been a part of our reason why we've won some of these races. I would be miserable in a plate race today because I was selfish and wasn't wanting to work with anybody and didn't care who was going to help me as long as I was getting help. But I wasn't going to be like, you know, I don't know. I couldn't. You wouldn't want to go to those teams meetings before the race. I'd be the first one going, I ain't. doing this.

Y'all know I ain't doing this, this plan. I ain't saying anything. I'll go, but y'all ain't going to get anything to me. Yeah. So you hinted about the second time that your dad tried to hire my father to drive for him. And that was later when y'all were doing the two-car deal. We all had the 28 and the 88. This is, I guess, Ernie's back from his crash in Michigan.

So now you've had Dale Jarrett. driving that car. Now you're going to have two cars. I remember this conversation hearing this somewhere where there was a, you know, there was a moment, I think, where y'all weren't quite sure what to do with Dale, Jared. Yeah. And I think through the, through, you know, he did y'all a solid.

Is that the way you saw it? It's like, man, this guy did a hell of the job for us. We got to figure out something. Absolutely. Absolutely. After, you know, we needed somebody to drive when Ernie got hurt. man we'd just come off of Davies accident tragic accident and man that was tough we not even sure if we wanted to keep going right how close how close did you come to maybe not going you know my dad said

he said you know we didn't go to polka no the next week and he said you know we can't race with tears in our eyes and and and your dad won the race I believe and carried that 28 flag around and and then we went to talladega but but it was it was it was a hard decision but the reason why we kept going is because all the it was a family you know robert yates racing was a family and it wasn't about robert or me it was about everybody right so we needed to keep going and we got it back on track with ernie and we got ervin i mean he was the closest thing to dale earnhardt has ever been i mean he yeah i mean he is he wasn't as intimidated but he tried and he was damn good super talented he gets hurt's like man what else can happen to us that was a practice

Blue right front tire at Michigan. Yeah. And he was on the show and told us about how close he came to losing his life that day on that back straight away. Gave him 10% chance. And Ernie and I were really close. We actually hung out together and we were together playing games the night before. And that was hard because that was probably the closest guy. My dad, Davey was a second son to my dad.

And I was just getting started. So Dave, we're all close, but we weren't as close as Ernie and I really close. I mean, that was really hard. And he's just, I mean, he's one of the most competitive, toughest guys I've ever been around and he made it. And he came back and he raised with a patch on his eye, which is crazy. Yeah.

That's how talented he was. That's crazy to me because I remember, you know, I don't know how else to say this. But when he came back and he raised a truck at North Worcesterbill. And he wore these sunglasses, but when he, there's pictures of him with him, glasses off and I can't you would never a driver would never be allowed to compete while still trying to recover from what he was trying to recover from right right and he literally

I mean he could he he might have a different opinion but I mean there's no way that he had good solid vision right to pass a physical and compete but he went out there and did it raced with a patch that's right on his eye race with a patch on his eye and then won like he could get back to a winning A race. But he admitted that, by the way. He admitted, like, he was like, yeah, I wasn't good. I wasn't health-wise bat.

Well, he got to use that excuse he had a head injury. He used that a lot. Yeah. But my dad came out and he said, all right, we've got a driver for a 28 car and got all the team guys together. He said, Dale Jarrett's our guy. I'm like, I'm not sure what I feel about that. You know, I mean, Dale Jarrett's a good guy. He's one Daytona 500, but, man, we've had Davey Allison and Ernie Irvin.

You want the best guy in the business in that car. Exactly. But Dale, so he told us that, and Dale, they've been struggling with Gibbs, and May Carr was his crew chief and brother-in-law, all that stuff. So I think he wanted, you know, his own deal. And so they won Charlotte in the fall, and my dad and I were driving home, and I said, man, you think he's still going to come? You know, I mean, do we have a contract?

No, he don't have a contract, but he shook my hand. He called us that night. He called my dad that. night. So don't you worry, I'm still going to be there. And started a 1995 season, set on a pole for Daytona 500. But we struggled. It was tough, man. It was, Dale's probably told you some of the stories. And we finally won Pocono. It was like, all right, maybe we got something going here. And then Ford called my dad, said, we want you to run a, and Ernie was getting better. So we want you to run a second car. My dad said, look, there's only one place in Victory Lane.

There's only one spot in Victory Lane. That's how he thought about it. He didn't really want two cars. and he said, Robert, we really need you to do this. And we want Dale Earnhardt to drive it. Okay, well, I'll see what I can do. And so he called your dad and they talked. And deep down, he felt like it probably wasn't the right thing to do. And the reason why he told me that is because Ford hired Richard Petty back years way back. Richard Pay is a Dodge guy.

Dale Earnhardt's the Chevrolet guy. Yeah. So he knew that he wanted him to drive a car, but he thought he'd, probably give him a raise and he probably had to do something different and he liked del jared i mean he really my dad believed 100% del jared and then he turned out to be right yeah and um and so he called edsel and he told edsel forward he said look here's a deal we can't get dale or maybe he just said look we've got the right dale and his name of dale jared yeah and etzel said okay we got one mission and he said what's that he said you beat that number three good wrench car you hear me

and that was our mission. And the Daytona 500, 1900, 1996 won the race, and that Black 3 was second. Yep. Couldn't pass it. Man, y'all are so fast. Dude, that was so awesome. They changed the engine rules that year. They took all that stuff out of the manifold, clean that up,

change in compression ratio, and we had this carburetor that was just pretty special where the butterflies open the same direction, and you could offset that base plate, seven horsepower right there. My dad would not let us put He would not let us bolt that carburetor on Until happy hour So we went down there qualified Qualified, qualified decent

You guys might have been on the pole And then we went Run under 125 and I kept like, Dad, come on, let's put these carburet It's up on the cabinet and the And me and Steve Allen were Intentered. Steve was on 88, I was the 28. And there was no rule against it at the time

There is now. well there was when they had car raged but and um and so we kept saying come on big daddy come on big daddy let's put those car rage on he said no no no not yet not yet it's not time yeah like the like the governor or something you know so finally he said all right boys it's time we both of those things on a happy hour i said man if we make it through tech we're going to win this race so i'm a nervous guy man i'm shy and nervous and so i'm like steed you go first and he's like So he went through tech. Oh, man, I'm torn up, man.

I can't eat, can't sleep. And I said, how to go? He said, they took my car barrier. I said, no, they didn't. He said, I'm just messing with you. Oh, wow. So we went through tech and hang on the race. We lost ignition box on the 28 and then the 88 went on to win that race.

And that was so cool, man. That was one of my favorite races ever. The 9-2-500 was just my favorite because it was the first and we worked so hard for it. But that race was cool. But Edsel said you beat that black number three. Davy had a mission to beat Dad. Dad had been able to manipulate most every driver that he competed against.

He'd run into him, then he'd put his arm around him, and you're not mad at me, are you? Yeah. Seen it all? Every driver just about it. But Davey, I remember having something on the dash of the car at one point about, you know, going to, you know, we're not in, we're the real deal. We're not bothered by the three car.

And I know you guys, and y'all were, y'all's car was black. Y'all were, you know, you all were fast, you know, couldn't, we weren't going to outrun you on a straightaway. And, you know, Davey was quickly, quickly. becoming a perfect race car driver, you know, just a guy that could go out there and win any race he started in. And then, you know, with Ernie, same thing. You said it. He's like the, he's like Dellerhardt all over again. And he'll put the bumper to you, even Deller Nart. Yep. He wasn't scared. I thought, man, these guys are going to be hard to beat for a long, long time.

But it was pretty interesting to. Davy was, and, you know, Davey is, he was intimidated by your dad. And we all, we all knew it. Yeah, he was. I mean, he would race toe to toe with him, but he was, you know, he was, your dad was still the man, right? Yeah. And so we, we all knew that. And we knew when we got around him, we had to be careful and, and, and, but he, you know, but Dave was so, he was finesse. I mean, he knew what he wanted in a car and he got it right, man, he could, he could, he could went anywhere, right. But, um, I feel like, though, that he had, y'all had, um, um, um, he knew, um, um, he had, um, um, um, y'all had give Davey this confidence that like, man, you can beat, you can beat that guy.

I know you look up to him and I know he's like you're, like, you know, he's, you know, you come into the sport as young as Davey was and you look up to, you know, Dale Earnhardt, of course, you're going to look up to him. But I think you guys did a really good job of sort of building his confidence up to be like, man, you can beat this guy, no problem. And he felt that. He was, you know, we, you know, the 92 season, I mean, it's well documented, right? empty cup deal. Every time I watch that, man, I get guy, it tears me up, you know, but

Davy Allison is the toughest guy you've ever seen. I can't even, and, you know, we, we broke an oil line at Bristol. We thought it we blew up, but it actually broke a fitting and broke his ribs, right, cracked his ribs, go the next week at North Wilkesboro. Jimmy Hensley gets in the car qualifies, and Dave gets in the car, wins the race. And then it was just like that all year long, right? We'd win wreck, win right, the one hot night, win that race, cut him out of the car, go to hospital. But he was, I can't even, I can't even imagine somebody doing that these days. You know how, damn, tough he was.

But he was, and he was just focused, man, he was so focused. And he knew how good his dad was, and he wanted to be better than his dad. And that right there is the reason why my dad picked Dale Jarrett, because, Dale's dad was awesome. Your dad was awesome. You knew what it was like. You knew what that meant. You knew what you needed to do.

But Davey wanted, he was out to prove something. But at the end of that whole deal, when it was all sudden done, and we went into that last race with a championship lead, and all we needed to do was, you know, kind of have a solid day. Ernie wrecked in front of us. We're getting him. He gets out and was like, it just wasn't meant to be. Yeah. Come out of Atlanta.

Atlanta. 92, yeah. That last race. Yeah. And we were all, you know, I was. young, dumb, thought we should win every single race and mad. And I feel bad about it now because, you know, it's like, it's just, you know, it's kind of what it is. But he, he was an incredible leader and had an incredible faith. And he's like, this is going to be okay. Yeah. Who built,

who built y'all's race cars of chassis? So back when Loughlin built most of them, because that was Larry, it was a Loflin guy, right? And then they came, then they'd went and get finished out at a Allison Brothers. Yep. They did some things for us. We got Bodies Home. So I got a job over at Allison Brothers. I worked there.

I got some of my paste of, my checks. So I worked for Kenny and Ronald Donald, which is Donnelly's sons. And I'm helping them on the front with Legends cars and going to the junkyard and getting all these parts and stuff for the Legends cars to make spindles. Davies and Ernie's, I can't remember which year it was.

I think it was when Davey was driving, but those cars are in the back. They had a back room where they did, we built race cars and finished out race cars, hung bodies and the interior sheet mill and stuff like that. And so I'm up there working on those, this for probably, I don't know, I worked there for three months, six months or something. And it was interesting for me because, like, he's, you know, you talk about the, you know, it was us or them.

Right. You know, it was a three or the 28. And I'm working at the Allison brothers. He's a plant. His car, I'm a mole. I shouldn't know. Daddy, you ain't going to believe what they got on this thing. I walk back there.

I walk back there and I'm like, whoa. It's one of the 28 cars. I was like starstruck. That was before cell phones and cameras. Hey, you know, you bring up something funny that I had never even considered. I wonder, going back to your tech story at Daytona, I wonder how many people have actually given themselves up just by the way they were acting so nervous in the tech life. Like sometimes, you know, the way you'd say.

it you can't eat you can't sleep you're just nervous wreck or whatever i mean like if i'm a nascar official before i go open up that hood i might just take a peek around and like look at somebody in the eye i probably know probably more guys on the other side of that deal like one guy you mentioned earlier slugger was pretty good at getting things through yeah you know those guys slugger did work at yates he did he did that's right for us and um yeah we had a good time working together but um one one story i want to make sure to tell you about davy and your dad and i love this story This is like the, as an energy guy, you don't get a whole lot of compliments. This is like the biggest compliment you've ever got.

So we're at Atlanta, I think it was like 91. And old Atlanta track, I used to love it because you could see the whole track, you know, sitting out there. And man, we were just blowing by the three down the straightaway. And your dad drive back by in the corner. We blow back by. And your dad came on the radio. He said, Richard, you watching this? He said, yes, Dale.

he said look I can beat davy but there ain't no damn way I'm beating Robert and as an injuny guy that was as good as it's you know what I mean and we had we had a really good motor at that time but that was fun racing back there he he was amazing at Atlanta you know how Dale was talking about he was lucky that court that track had so much corner oh my god there's a lot oh my god big corners right well back then they didn't push their engines that hard because they knew that I mean And Richard would say that, and Danny Lawrence would tell me, it's like, we don't need to blow up.

We're going to be in this thing, and they win championships like that. And we were hanging it out, and we would break every once in a while. Different deal. You know how Dale has that restrictor plate motor that he, you know, holds on top of the mountain, basically? You still have that motor, right? Do you have one? So right before we were at the, we were going to win when we won four in a row at Talladega. That weekend, that morning there was water and oil and a freeze-plugged.

It pushed itself out or something had happened. And they were like, it wasn't water in the old, but a freeze plug had cracked. And they were like, we could probably replace it, but we're worried about it. So we're going to change the motor. And they took the motor out and it never ran again. They put it on a pedestal. And it's on like a, it's really nice pedestal. And they gave it to me.

So I have it. You mean you should look at it one day. Yeah. Can I look at the manifold? Yeah. You can tell me what it is. You can look at it. Go, oh, there it is.

We should do that. No, that would be awesome. Like take that motor, bring it in here, just let you go to town and tell us why it's so good. Let's do it. Deal. Do you have a motor that is similar to that in terms of you just, like, the one that will always be in your, in the top of your mind is like the motor that you're most proud of? You know, so that 92 500 deal is pretty cool. I mean, we, you know, we only had one engine.

We only had a couple inches, right? And so we would go qualify with it and we'd bring it back home and re-revee. build it and take it back down and race it. That's just, you only have one good one, right? You didn't know why because you didn't have all this equipment. And so that one, my dad, he built the bottom in. I did the rest and he couldn't come back home because he had a plastic coat deal. He had to go do it.

That was his sponsor, right? He used to hand out the checks and stuff. So he said, I can't do it. So I said, I got this. I can do this. And so I was built, you know, went back home, took apart with all the guys. And I'm putting the engine together. And it keeps calling me on the phone.

I said, Dad, if. If you don't quit calling me, I'm never going to get this thing back down there. But that race, that engine was pretty cool. But we grew up, we didn't keep anything. I mean, we have one rule around my house. If it's not tied down, sell it. And because, you know, we were always buying the next piece of equipment, the next race car, the next engine.

I mean, we didn't have a dealership or anything that we could pull from other than what we did. And the engine business was kind of that. So we didn't have a lot of memorabilia around our place. I want to go back to your dad when he left Degard. Where are things at that point and why did he leave? Yeah, it was tough at that point because, you know, what had happened is, you know, he was building. They won a championship with Bobby, Richard Petty, Mike Kerb, Buddy Parrott.

They said, we want you to build our engines. We're struggling. We want you to build Richard Bay. So for my dad, he owned part. Well, he's supposed to own part of the engine company, which he never was on paper. So he didn't really, says, okay, let's do it. So he built those engines and won the 199th, the Dover, 200th of Daytona, like we talked about. And then Bobby just lost it.

It was. He was frustrated with that. Bobby was always easy to get frustrated. Yeah. That was, so it's interesting to, I've always wondered about Bobby when he won all those races with Junior Johnson in early 70s. I'm like, why did Bobby do, why did Bobby's career do what it did? after that because he bounced around and he'd middle of the season he just i'm gonna run my own damn car then and he'd get his old he'd go back to his own uh hewey town or whatever and run his own car

he couldn't never really find a fit you know where and he was he would get hot about something and yeah he Bobby is his own i mean he was his own worst enemy yeah in some ways right he was anti-establishment a little bit you know in some some ways you know you some ways you know you You were either a Richard Petty fan or a Bobby Allison fan. There was that beef between them. Like the Beatles or Elvis, right? You couldn't be both, right? And so Bobby was kind of the anti-Nascar kind of guy in some ways, but he was so smart.

I mean, he knew the cars inside and out. First guy to put power steering on a car, right? I mean, first guy to do lots of things. But he always kind of, he challenged everything, and I think that war on people sometimes. but man, he was just an incredible guy, obviously. He was also frustrated, I think, by the second car. They had sacks in a car. Yeah.

And that was annoying to him, I think. Yeah, I think it just, you know, a lot of things, maybe. A lot of things, you know, it's just a success. You know, I think that his views and Gary's views were different. So how long, when did your dad decide that he was going to have to take off? Yeah. At what point? It was, he could see the writing on the wall.

You know, I mean, he knew it was common. He knew he's going to have to do something different. He needed a break. Why was DiGuard going the way it was going? Why did it, why did it, what, why did DiGuard end up becoming basically this shell of itself? Yeah, I think, I think that Bill and Jim, Jim, good guys, I just think they just, Bill wasn't close enough to it. You know what I mean?

And kind of from afar, it was maybe a little too easy almost. And it just, it just wasn't going right, right. He wasn't close enough to it to keep it, keep it heading the right direction. And that may be putting it nicely. I don't know. I wasn't part of all those things. But my dad saw it come, and he knew it was time to do something different. He took off, and he did fuel research down in Greenville, South Carolina.

Set up an engine shop. You know, it was going to do this ethanol. Turned out to be ethanol research and set up an engine shop. Unrelated to motorsports. Out of motorsports. And, man, it killed him. I mean, it was, it was, I remember him watching the 85 day, ton of 500 and didn't have a car in it and it was it just about killed him and so he knew he had to

get back in it and it wasn't long after we were moving all that stuff I was driving the truck yeah you know bringing everything back up here out to the speedway where we set up our injure shop how did your dad broker the purchase of the 28 Ford Lanier team yeah so at the end of that 85 year you know going into 86 sometime around there um My dad, Rick Hendrick called my dad, because he was building in just for Jeff Bodine and Gary Nelson. He and Gary obviously had a good relationship. We had about five cars. And Lee Morris from Ford Motor Company called and said, hey, we want you to come run this Reneer Lundy team.

What else getting out of this moving on? This is the 28 Hardy's car, Kelly Yarbrill was a badass in. Yes, sir. And now it's going to be Davy's car. That's right. So he had a choice. Do I go to work for Rick Hendrick or do I do this Ford deal with Renier-Lundy? and the Ford deal was just a better deal.

I mean, at the end of the day, both would have probably been okay, but the Ford deal was a better deal. And come run this team. You can be the team manager, build the engines, and here we go. And Kail was finishing up his career, and we got to do a couple of those races. And those cards were hand-painted, by the way,

the craziest thing. They'd come in the shop and paint them, you know, letter them. Really? Oh, yeah. Joey Knuckles was there and all those guys. But going into 87, they said, all right, well, we need a driver. who's going to drive this thing? And they said, well, what about Rusty Wallace?

And my dad said, well, what about Davey Allison? They said, well, I don't know. I mean, he's unproven. What do you want to do? They said, look, I've been around him as Arka stuff, his Bush stuff, know his dad, let's bring Dave on. So they said, okay, let's do it. How close did the Rusty deal come?

It was close. I mean, they were, it was kind of, you know, this one side, these people want to Rusty, and my dad wanted Davey. And it was, but fortunately, you know, it turned out, turned out good. And that year, you know, they didn't run the full season, but they won, set on five poles and won two races that year. Talladega and May being the first one, you know, Bobby was in the fence

as we've all seen many, many times. And then, and then Dover. But how did he, so how did he broker purchase of the team? So he got through the 87 season into 80s. going pretty well and then J.T. Lundy and Harry Reneer said we don't want to do this anymore. Wow. Lanier has been like the Lanier team, the Lanier name. I mean, why did he all of a sudden decided? So I don't know if it was financial what, but they were, you know, JT was in a horse racing Calumet Farms and Harry was into coal mining. And I think they might have just had their run of that

and decided it was time and Lauren and I talk about it a lot because Lauren Reneer was there and was part of that whole thing with Davey and all that stuff. Great guy. But they said, hey, look, we're going to sell a team. And my dad said, oh, okay, what am I going to do now? And so basically my dad went to Davey and said, man, this deal's falling apart. What do you think? Davey looked at my dad.

I said, look, Robert. He said, you can do this. You deserve it. And you're ready for it. My dad went home, talked to my mom. She said, let's do it. They sold the house that they were in, which they, they, He paid for everything, so paid for his house, sold it, used that money to put the down payment on the team, moved in an apartment, and put everything on the line.

And that was October 10th of 1988. So he owed on the team as they went into the first year with him as the owner. Absolutely, yeah. How long do you think it take him to pay off the team? Well, he never borrowed any money his whole life, and it was over $1 million. He could tell you to the penny, right? But his house, he had about $300,000 owed the rest of it. go to Daytona,

1989, very first race, crash and burn. Like burn the car of the ground. Like, oh, man, what did I got myself into? I think he got into it Jeff Bodine or something. It's just some good stuff on Davey called Bowdine at Conehead, I think. Yeah.

But anyway, and then, you know, just kept working, and then we finally won our first race at Talladega. Talladega again, right? My favorite racetrack. I know you love that place, too.

But won that race. and then it just kind of started taking off. But, you know, when they first started, you know, they did have a little bit of money. I think a sponsorship back then was about a million dollars a year. And earnings weren't that much. But they found, I mean, he just dug in. My dad drove the truck, built the engines, jacked the car. That's amazing.

Change tires. I mean, he was my hero. I mean, I remember as a kid when he worked at DIGAR, he brought up the hauler and parked in front of our house. And I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever, you know. But he was just, man, he loved just working, man. He wanted to work. He wanted to be able to do everything. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah, but I would imagine, though, he probably had that paid off in a year, two years maybe. I mean, especially when you guys start, you know, Davey started lighting the world on fire, didn't he? Yeah, it was pretty quick. I mean, it didn't take long. But 1990, you know, in the spring of that year, Texaco was putting a lot of pressure on him. They said, hey, look, Robert, why don't you sell the team to Carl Haas? you know he's got his Indy car teams and all this stuff

and so they were putting a lot of pressure on him we went to Bristol and I was getting ready to graduate but I was still you know went there on the pit crew and um and we're on the backstretch I mean we were it was kind of a bad deal but we so we were running okay

and um last pit the caution came out and my dad's a crew chief and he looked at us and you want pit or stay out and we all said stay out stay out don't don't pit and we ended up win that race. And that right there was kind of a turning point for us. If we wouldn't have won that race, he might have sold the team and we wouldn't be sitting here talking today. Wow. Bristol, 1990? Yeah, beat Mark Martin. And that was a really big moment for our team. Jack and your dad

partnered up, but I know that Jack was reluctant to do so. First off, I guess, you know, what was the purpose of the partnership? Why did y'all decide to team up with Roush? Well, we, so first of all, we you know, everybody built their own engines, like I said. And then after we won the championship with DJ, all the four teams, except for Jack, said, why don't you just build our engines, lease them to us? So we started an engine business, my dad and I, and we had eight Ford teams, including our own stuff, and then Jack had his five cars. And so we said, let's build a new shop up here in Morrisville.

And my dad had this vision, you know, and he bought this shop and upfit at 75,000 square feet, world-class engine shop. Never been done, heard of, even thought of, right? But we're engine guys. So he built this shop. Well, by the time 2003 rolls around, a lot of those guys are gone. Travis Carter, Kmart left, Dodge came, took a bunch of teams. Yeah.

So we were sitting there with basically our two cars and some road race programs inside this incredible facility in 2003. And we knew Jack may be moving down. And so finally, when we called Ford, Dan Davis, and he said, yeah, why don't you guys get together? I'll back it. I'll put more money behind it for R&D and put your program together.

Well, before we went and talked to Jack, my dad and Jack didn't like each other. Why? Because they both wanted to be the best Ford guy out there. They really didn't like each other. How far did that go back, though? Like, when did they start getting rocked? Well, from the beginning?

It's really Dale, it's Dale's fault, to be honest with you. Oh, good. All this is. Whose? Your dad's fault. Okay. Because early 90s, he was dominating plate races, right? And so Ford said, why don't you guys work together?

You and Jack get together and compare engines and figure out, you know, what's going on. So I was just out of college. We drove our engine up there, took two engines up there in a van. Me and Larry Wallace and Dev and Barbie. And we spent three days there. And we ran our engine. We ran Jack's engine. We ran Jack's the first time I ever met Jack, three, four o'clock in the morning,

back there at seven o'clock the next morning. And so, all right, this is. is pretty cool. So we went home and we all went to Talladega and we qualified third and Jack qualified like 30 third. And so, needless to say, it wasn't a very good start. And he felt cheated or slighted by the fact that we didn't share everything with them. And so that was kind of one piece. And then, you know, it was always a competition between Jack and my dad, you know, my dad won the championship first in 99 and Jack later in 03. But they were, they, they, just they wanted to beat each other.

I remember Mark was going to win the championship and put one of y'all's engines in his car at Atlanta. Yep. And it blew up. Nope. It didn't blow up. No. What happened?

It didn't run good. Didn't run good. So did Jack get mad about that? He wasn't happy with Mark about that. Oh. Because Mark kind of. Mark asked for that to happen, didn't he? Mark drove that engine change, didn't he?

You give me that engine. I'll win this championship. That's right. Oh, wow. Yes. Well, Jack says, I'll give you that engine. you're going to have to take their car too. Oh, that's right.

It was the whole thing. And so the car they picked was what we just ran at Phoenix, which was a terrible car for Atlanta, right? Yeah. And then so they put it in and Robin and Steve Mill and all that group. And they, I mean, it wouldn't run. Wiring was mess. I mean, it was just a mess, right?

Yeah. And so at the end of the day, it was an experiment went bad. Good. I mean, I know where Marcus was coming from, but if he had put it in his car, I think it might have been a different story. but I built that engine. I mean, I built part of the – so as a kid, I'm like, oh, my God, you're kidding me.

We're going to line up and put one of our engines in his car. Yeah. And – but it was just – they just wanted to beat each other. I mean, they were so competitive. Was to his first point when you talked about – when you went and compared the engines and then ran – it was at Talladega right after that – was he right? Was he right? Did you guys hold some stuff back?

Well, so Larry Wallace had a pretty strong influence on our deal, and he didn't want to share the cylinder. their heads with Jack and Jack and I talk about this all the time you know and we talk about that that moment so he was somewhat right yeah because I would agree with that right like why would you you compete against them you wouldn't go you're going you were going over their shop knowing that you had 50 at least 50 more than they had yeah and what were they going to give you that's right that's right but but when we walked in his shop now this is crazy so we had one dino one superflow dino rouse into jack shop at like 25 dynos damn wow

And I'm thinking to myself, godly, how in the world can we even compete with that? I mean, it was buildings everywhere, machines, dynamometer. So right away, I was pretty, as an engineer, I was pretty fascinated with this guy, Jack Rausch. I'm like, this is pretty cool. I mean, he was there doing stuff. And so although they didn't like each other,

we knew that, you know, there could be something there in the future. When y'all sat down in the meeting, was Jack and your dad there together? So in the meeting for the first? No. No, I was there. My dad wasn't there. So your dad and Jack never were in the same space together.

Not then. In terms of putting this together. No. And so now what we know of Roush racing engines and Yates, it's now, even today, a firm partnership. So when we put the deal together, my dad and we were at Atlanta and at the end of 03, back when Atlanta was next, I think we were in Atlanta, Rockingham homestead, something like that. And so my dad and I looked at us, all right, let's go. It's time to go talk to Jack.

All right. So we walked through the garage and my dad put his hand on Jack's shoulder. He said, hey, can we go meet it? Your motorhome and talk about this deal that's kind of in the background and we haven't talked about yet. He said, yep, meet me in my motorhome. And so we're all a little nervous because Jack's pretty intimidating guy. You know, he's engineer and smart guy and Jack Rosh.

Yeah. And so we went in the motorhome. home and we're sitting there. And he looked at my dad. He said, he said, I don't like you. He said, but I like Doug and I think he has a good future. And he said, because of that, I'm willing to do this deal with you. And that's exactly who Jack Roush is. Hard to like. I mean, I don't know. He's to the point. He's to the point. He's like, hey, I don't like you. Yep. I like this guy. I mean, he would, he's absolutely this type of person that was sit in a room and say, say that complete. Well, why did you all get?

It'd be okay with it. Like, was he right about you and him having a good relationship at least? Yeah, yeah. So the next week at Rockingham, Kenseth is running for the championship, clinches the championship, and he said, all right, bring your stuff here. We're going to go back to Michigan and fly back to Michigan, and we're going to talk about putting our deal together and people and all that stuff.

I'm like, all right, so they won the deal, got in a plane with him. He's flying left seat by himself, and I'm in the back. And he already had his plane wreck. I'm like, man, I really want this deal. that happened. And so we got there and got in a Roush Mustang ripping down wet streets, drops me off the hotel room. He said, I got one thing to want to tell you before you get out the car. So, yes, sir. He said, I'm a nail straightener. I said, oh, I know all about this. Yes, sir. I'm a nail straightener too. We're going to get along really good. And that means he doesn't

waste any money. He saves. But we went to the shop and started to talk about the people that we're going to come with our program, which is a really awkward feeling for me because this group of guys just won the championship. And I've got to go tell half of them or more, they're not going to be part of our program going forward. But anyway, that worked out okay. We brought 12 people down. And the winner of 03 going into 04, man, we work freaking seven days a week, slept on the couch, did whatever it took. Because our engines were so different. People said, well, why don't you just run Jack's engines in his car and Robert's engines in his car? I'm like, no, no, this is going be a Roush Yates engine. Stick with me. And they did. And one of my proudest moments ever,

so we went to Daytona 500, set on the front row, Biffel was on the pole with Jack and Elliot was on that outside pole with my dad. And I've got this picture hanging up in the lobby and I'm over here on the side looking at this thing saying, this is awesome. This is freaking awesome. That was 0-4? Oh-4. You won't? Who won to race at? I won't know. So, Yeah, I remember something happened to Biffle when he had to go to the back. And I got to line up with Elliot on the front road to bring them to the green. And I was, but I was as a pole sitter. Man, we made a lot of power.

He had something happened. I forgot all about that. He had something where he had to do an adjustment or something. No, it was the engine. Oh, he changed motors. Oh, yeah. No, we made a lot of power, but, boy, it was a bit messy for a while. Yeah.

But, yeah, we had a problem with, we had changed the engine and started in the back. So let me ask you, let me ask you this. So I want, we're going to eventually, you're going to eventually answer the question of what you're doing today. It isn't all motorsports. At what point in your life did you, there was a point even back in 2004 where you were 100% motor builder in NASCAR. Right.

At what point did you start to evolve into more? Well, and why? Yeah, so, you know, I've always been, you know, entrepreneurial trying things, you know, trying to make sure the business works and look around and, you know, you've got a lot of guys with other outside things going on that help help the calls, right? And so, you know, we started a part store. And it's like, all right, let's, we're selling used parts. Let's start a retail store. So selling what? Everything, motorsports, anything and everything.

Okay. Engines, car parts, drive helmets. What was it called? Rousehate's performance products. Okay. Yep, started that. Did Ford have any involvement with that, or is it like you sold parts for everything? That was just our own deal.

We had everything. And we found the more parts we sold, the more money we lost. It was quite the experience. Retail is just a tough, tough go, right? But that led to some partnerships along the way that we have with UTI. That's right down the street of NASCAR Tech, one of our great partners and provide lots of great. We've hired over 150 of their students there.

Commetic gas, you know, a lot of things that stuck. So we learned some things and got some people. We got out of that. Greg Friendly, my buddy now has that place, SRI. That's where we used to be. So basically I said, change the sign and I'll hand you the keys. So it's working out well for him. But through that, we built grassroots engines.

We did a lot of road race engine programs. We are really proud to be part of Ford's, a return. turned to LaMalle, the 50th anniversary, beat Ferrari in the first time back of the Ford GT. So that was a cool thing for us. But all along, we're building up this machining capability, right? Doing more parts, machining more parts. And we said, we should turn this into more. And my dad and I always dreamt of having a company that built, you know, things for the defense,

aerospace, space. And so we kind of were on this mission. And we had the equipment and the skill sets. And so finally when my dad, you know, after he passed, my mom put this building at East Barrow race shop on the market. And in 2017, I bought that building, moved in there in 2018. And today we have about 65 CNC machines making parts for the defense industry and space, aerospace, motorsports.

We make all the next gen uprights, shifters, oil tanks, stuff like that. So I have about 125 employees there doing that. It's really cool, something I'm really proud of. Yeah. Where is this shop? It's in the same park here. So you're building stuff for the military and for space in Mooresville, right? Just a seven hour and away from where we're at right now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're open, you know, seven days a week, four shifts. I just got a letter two weeks ago, and this is something made me really proud of, you know, thanking our company and our employees for our involvement in the crisis or war in Ukraine because some of our products go over there and and and a and it helped in that call. So, you know, there's, you know, winning races is awesome. Yeah, it's what it's all about, but also helping and being part of something bigger. We're making parts of SpaceX, which is something also.

Yeah, that's really cool. You know, we went out there and visited when we ran the clash. And, you know, so it's, it's just something that, I think that fits really well with this area, this industry, these people, these skill sets, and we're proud of that. You know, Brad Halaski's a company. Is he doing similar or is that similar to what y'all do in terms of building rocket parts and so forth? Yes, it's similar but different. He is additive manufacturing, so just printing, metal printing, like 3D printing.

And then he does some of the machining as well. And we've collaborated on a couple of things or trying to collaborate on some things there as well, but a little bit different in the fact that he has more additive manufacturing, we have more just traditional C&C. Ours is automated. But, yeah, interesting. Can you explain like a little bit what the parts are, especially in the space program? Like what are you making for them?

Yeah, so parts that go on the Raptor, the rocket engine. So we make some manifolds and some other brackets that go on there. We also make parts that go on the Starlink satellites. Yeah. Something that there's tons of those things. So we're making some of those parts. So yeah, it's just. One just went up a day or two ago.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing what Elon Musk has done. And just, I think of him, like I went to the shop and I, What I saw is just a big old race shop. You know, that looked like a fab shop and a machine shop. And it reminded me of a race shop. And I think what he's done is kind of like what we do is racers.

Like, why won't that work? Why don't we try this? You know, why does it have to be that way? And I think he challenged the norm and changed the whole space industry, which is cool. And I think, to me, he'd make a hell of a racer. How do these contracts, like, are you in the middle of the contracts negotiating? I mean, how does that work?

Yeah, and we have a team of people that do that. I mean, Jeff Clark's on the sales side of that. Well, he would be perfect. Yeah, he could sell anything. But he's on that team. Marion Malwin, and like so, we have a staff of 125 employees there. And a lot of them came from the racing side of, like, our lead engineer there was designed the current engine we're racing.

And so it's just a good way to give people opportunities and continue to grow. So something really cool. And as you guys, you know, we're adding. So that's about a 90,000 square feet building we're in now. and we're adding another 55,000 square feet behind it to continue to grow. Man. How often do you get to the boat? Not often enough.

Yeah. How well did they turn the boat back is what I want to know? Is there any cleaning fees that we need to go ahead and settle up right now? I saw some pictures. It looked like they had a good time. We did? Yeah, that's awesome. Did you leave their boat like you did Panama City back in 2004?

Okay, good. I'll tell you what. If you hang out with Steve Latar, you're going to have a good time. It don't matter. Did you figure out where the water was coming from? What water? So, oh, you didn't know. He's looking at me like, what are you talking about?

So am I. What happened? So in the room that me and Amy were staying in, there was an air handler for the air conditioner that the cat and things was leaking into the floor. Okay. And so me and Amy got there and it was a little bit of water, and every day there was more water. and just just wet carpet sorry about that that makes it free why are you sorry

I was like man we got to we got to fix this like you know when you see something you don't want you don't want him to think that you did it no but especially when he's like an air handler and he described it to me I'm like oh yeah I mean I know I don't fix that I work on those all the time yeah I tell you what and one thing I wanted to make sure we talked about is how fortunate we are to be part of NASCAR and the in the opportunity that the NASCAR family, France family, has provided for all of us. I mean, I just can't think Jim. Jim France is a man. He is just an awesome guy. I mean, back when I remember Bill Jr., you sit outside to holler all the time, and you could always talk to him,

and sometimes he'd tell you things he didn't like, but Jim's that guy. And then Lisa and Ben and and Brian, I mean, it's, it's cool. And the biggest part for me is that without NASCAR, I would have never got to know my dad. And I think about that all the time. That's probably one of the reasons why I love it so much is because it provided an opportunity for him. My mom raised me until she handed me off to my dad, you know, for my career and race and stuff.

But it is awesome, man. Yeah. I can agree with that. It's provided a lot of us with a lot of joy and continues to today. I mean, we are all sitting here because of that. That's absolutely truth, man. But, Doug, it's been awesome. I've enjoyed conversating with you.

I hope you enjoyed coming here today. And I know a lot of people that are listening to this podcast have enjoyed your stories. Pretty amazing life that you've carved out for yourself. And from where you started to where you are today, I bet you imagine you never dreamed of having the opportunities and creating the opportunities you've created for yourself. So pretty incredible. And thanks for giving us some time today.

Yeah, thank you for having me on. I mean, I love what you're doing. This is The Show to be on. I was nervous. I said Matthew, I think my whole life story just to make sure I was thinking about it for me, not for you guys, you know, but you think about all those times, those stories, the things we've done, places we've been, people we've met, opportunities we've had, and the races we've won.

I just feel blessed to be part of this deal. And thank you for having me on. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much, Doug. I enjoyed it, man. Doug Gates on the Dale Jr. Download. You know, Mike, whether I've been in the garage, right, as a driver or in the studio as a member of the media, the biggest lesson I've learned over the years is that we are all better off

with an ally, a friend, a partner. My favorite part of the download has always been the opportunity it gives me to connect with such a wide range of people. They love racing as much as I do, and it means so much to me that when we leave the guest segment, I leave it with a feeling that I can call each and every guest on the download a true ally. Thank you, Ally, for your content. support of the show and the entire dirty mo media team. We are live on YouTube, so you guys know for Ask Junior.

Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. And this is the Asked Jr. portion of the show. You guys sent your questions into Xfinity Racing on Twitter. And Hannah's going to go through them and pick out her favorites and throw the rest in the trash. So here we go.

This first one comes from Caleb. And I actually really like this one. It says, when a crew chief or spotter says pull those belts tights, how literal is that? I usually hear them say it three to four times per race. How tight can you actually get? Well, so it's good to be reminded to tighten your belts. I know it sounds like, you know, it sounds like a pep talk, but when you're racing around the racetrack, especially at a banked racetrack, maybe like Dover especially. You go, you know, at Dover, you're going down to frustrated

when you kind of drop off into the bottom of that corner. And when you land, your body and everything kind of goes down in the seat. And the longer you run, as you're running lap after lap after lap of doing that, you kind of slide down in the seat. And you get lower and lower and lower in the seat. And a lot of drivers will put a little box, a fabricated box over by the clutch pedal, to push with their left foot, to push themselves back up in the seat. and but anyhow as you're running

those belts yeah they won't be as tight because you're sliding down further and further in the seat and you need to you know readjust them a lot of times during the caution periods I would loosen my belts and get myself back up in the seating position where I started

get my ass back up in the back of the seat and then tighten all the belts back to kind of get back up so I kind of you know while you want to be comfortable and down as low as possible, you also kind of want to see, you know, see pretty far off the hood there. But yeah, so hearing a guy say, tighten your belts, maybe some crew chiefs or spotters are saying that as a pep talk.

But at the same time, you know, it's a good practice to make sure those belts are tight because you do move around and see quite a bit. This one's coming in from the chat. Actually, there's been a couple people that have asked about it. a couple of them maybe they actually met you at this bow jangles the other day you got the chance to go and make biscuits how is that so um there's a new bow jangles in canapolis it's literally about three blocks from ma'm all's house and um they have a window in there where you can watch the best the master biscuit makers make the biscuits so you you know you hear uh in the tagline

and you hear companies say made fresh, made on site, made from scratch, well, it's really true at Bojangles, and you can go there and watch them, and they take the flour and the buttermilk and everything and start with those ingredients and go from there, and it happens. It's really a lot of work. They do hundreds, if not a couple thousands a day. And it's, you know, you're just, the master biscuit maker is just, you know, sitting there making when the morning crush comes for the breakfast they're they're

grinding away making biscuits one after you know pan after pan after pan after pan after pan and it's it's a lot of work I'll be honest with you I was really I was really surprised it it what goes into it the other thing that was nice was the attitude of everybody in the in the room everybody back there in the kitchen everybody was it was a machine with specific parts with specific roles and everybody was in their place, in their station with a smile, working away on a mission. And when I worked the window, they have a process, right?

And you got to understand everything you're seeing on the screens. And there's two lines in the drive-through, all right? And so there's two people can order at the same time. And you don't know which one's going to pull ahead of the other. Right. So you really kind of as your, what happens is, is basically you're standing at the window and you really don't know which orders coming first. That was kind of a confusing part because if two people are sitting there ordering, you see the orders pop up on the screen, but then you don't know which cars in front of which. And so you got to pay attention to what's going on. You'll give somebody the wrong bag pretty easily.

But they got a great process. Anyways, I was glad to kind of go through that experience and know what that's all about. It gave me a new appreciation for everything going on back there. You walk up and you get your food and you take all that stuff for granted. And I'm becoming a bigger and bigger. Through this whole process, I'm becoming a bigger, bigger fan of Bojangles and the product they make. So we have a new chicken sandwich that I'm a big fan of. And we've had it in this room and we've ate it.

We've had Bojangles come here and bring some of those with us with them when they unveiled that a year ago. Yeah. The next one here, and this kind of comes from a conversation or a tweet that you sent over the weekend. From Josh Briggs, it says, if you ever had the chance to lay blacktop down on Bristol, would you do the same at Dover? Oh, yeah.

You know, I think, you know, concrete, first off, everybody would agree the last race at Dover, Saturday and Sunday, was awesome. So maybe I wouldn't be as eager, and I'm not as vocal, I guess, about paving that racetrack. but I just know that when I race there, so concrete, when you put concrete down, you've got to cut these grooves in it so it can expand and contract, I suppose, in weather from hot to cold throughout the seasons.

And so those joints that that creates, if you have a deck where the boards kind of bow up at the end, so where you cut a seam in that concrete around the racetrack over time that that seam kind of rises and so it creates a lip and if you drove down a concrete interstate you'll you know your car goes that's because that's that's crossing those joists or those joints

and that's the way it feels when you race around there it's like buta but do you're under caution the car just kind of bucking as it's kind of going over these ridges, these rises in the joints of the concrete. And when they went there for IndyCar, they had to grind it, and it's really because they had to grind those humps

or those peaks out of the track. But, you know, I don't, I don't, I didn't enjoy that about racing there. I want it to be not perfectly smooth, but I just feel like that asphalt is, What racetracks should be, you know, if it's not dirt, it should be asphalt. Concrete's really, I would even go as far to say they should try to pave Martinsville. Take that concrete up and put pavement down.

And, you know, with the technology we have today, it would probably be able to survive what it goes through. And, you know, they paved, they put concrete down at these tracks because, at Bristol, at Dover, at Martinsville, because the cars were tearing up the asphalt in the heat of the day. and that was in the 90s, right? When asphalt, it's a little different these days, and it's made differently, and I think the technology it would be able to survive, but I don't know, that's just me.

I don't think everybody shares my opinion. Everybody probably has no problem with Martin Zille the way it is, and Dover was such an amazing race. Why would you want to mess with it? But now, going back to Bristol, I wouldn't only pave it. I would reconfigure it to where it was, I would try to get back to where it was,

in the 80s as far as platform banking. They had like 36 degrees of banking, way more than it has today. So I would, I would, well, not way more, but more. I would reshape the corners to where it wasn't that progressive banking and, you know, make it, you know, I would try my best

to get it back to where it was. I'd even tear down half the grandstands. Even if I could sell more tickets, I wouldn't build more grandstands. I would just, I'd have, people I'd have standing room only right just really kind of get back to where that track used to look I always thought it was cool when you could over the over the turn three and four wall the cars are going by and you look out and there's that big hill of farmland that was such a cool visual in the

scoreboard on the in the middle of the turn with the top five on it visually I think it'd be so weird to see martinsville with asphalt just visually I 100% agree yeah and it's probably maybe it doesn't Maybe it's not a good idea to put asphalt down there, but I just... Don't know until you try. Never was a concrete fan. Never really liked it. Don't love it at Martinsville, but I do love the racetrack. I just love short tracks, and it's kind of all we have in terms of short track racing.

Oh, we've got two more. One of these is from Keith Ricky. It says, I found an unopened bottle of Coke in my addict from 1996 featuring Junior and his dad. Do I drink it? No. Oh, Lord. Heck no. I don't think they're really genuinely asking us that that's what they need to do, right?

I hope not. And this last one here comes from Tim Heatherly. He said, now that they're so realistic, do you think you would ever gotten your dad into a simulator? If yes, would you take it serious or turn damage off and wreck everyone in sight? I think since simulators are so prevalent, I mean, Chevrolet has their own dad would, without a doubt, try it. he would do it in a way where no one would know, right? He would, he would, you know, show up at 9 o'clock at night when everybody was gone, and some get, you know, he had a call ahead and had some guy be waiting there to unlock it

and turn it on and put him in there. And he would want to try it, he would want to do it, and not let anyone see him doing it. Now, this is a guy that used to ride bicycles backwards on the handlebars, but he wouldn't want anybody watching him drive a simulator and then he would probably do it never do it again and get out and continue to complain

about them and what a waste of time they are now he would have some ammo he'd have some experience to fall back on to back up his negativity because he thought computers were a waste of time

he thought when I was playing NASCAR racing by papyrus in the late 90s. That was a waste of time. And, you know, he was, you know, he passed, when he passed away, we still weren't kind of super dependent on laptops engineering. All the SIM stuff hadn't come out, come out yet. And now he would probably be warmed up to it quite a bit these days, had he been around to see it become such a big part of the sport.

But I think in terms of driving a simulator, whether it even is, the big one at Pratt and Miller that Chevrolet has, he probably would frown, he'd probably clown it a little bit. Well, that is it for this week's Ask Junior Questions. Man, we really appreciate everybody supporting the Ask Junior segment of the show and sending in their questions to Xfinity Racing and appreciate everything that Xfinity does for our podcast

and our family here at Dirty Mode Media. Xfinity X-5 is more than just fast, Mike. That's right. It's also reliable, powerful, and secure. meaning everyone can do more of what they love with faster internet. I'm a customer and can vouch for everything I'm saying here to be true. And listen, you can keep your team connected with that Wi-Fi coverage. It delivers the speed your devices need so your crew can stay in the fast lane on race day.

And just as a reminder, send you asked junior questions to add Xfinity Racing on Twitter every week. We will answer the best ones. Thank you, Exfinity, Proud, Premier Partner, NASCAR. It was a fun show. We had some great stories with Doug, and I knew, you know, I've always kind of wanted to get to know him better. He's been involved in the sport for so long, and I feel like that I've never had much conversation with the guy. I knew his dad a little bit better than I knew Doug, but pretty awesome to be able to sit down and spend some time with him. Super enjoyable, and to be honest with you, I didn't know his dad at all, so it was just fun hearing about his dad in the whole family.

So good job recommending him for the show. I enjoyed that. I appreciate it, man. Great open segment, or should I say, dirty air. That's right. And, yeah, good-ass junior stuff. Yeah. Some great stuff, man.

All right, man. Everybody, have a great week. Episode 382 is in the books, and we'll see you next week. It's going to be a lot of fun on the Dale Jr. Download with our guest. Drum roll, please. Who is it? You don't have it?

That should just be the end of the show. And just leave it like that, leave it like a cliffhanger. Do it. Hell, yeah. Piss them off. Or you could say, yeah, you can play a jingle. Or you could say, yeah, you could play a jingle. Or you could say, yeah, you could play a jingle.

It said, we're not going to tell you. We're not going to tell you. Thought that you were going to know the Guess. No, you're not going to know the guess. You're going to have to, wait, wait, wait, just like everybody else. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, uh, I'm majored and digger. Either these big margaritas or big beer. You're busting.

That's what's great about podcast. We're not going to tell you. I thought you were going to know the guest. No, you're not going to know the guest. No, no. That'll be in the open next week. No, that's the end. No, that's the end.

That's the end of our show. You do. No, no, no. That's going to work that in. He's going to turn that. into a... I'm going to turn into a song. You know me. I get fucking weird. That's you. It's your best.