The Dale Jr. Download - 383 - Denny Hamlin: Zero F's Given

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

He's a NASCAR winner. He co-owns a race team with Michael Jordan. He's not afraid to tell it like it is. Denny Hamlin joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mike Davis at the table for a bold and honest conversation about the sport.Hamlin comes in "full send" mode with his takes on the sport and the direction it is headed. His unique perspective, as a current competitor and car owner, gives him an even bigger voice at the table. Boy, does he use it! While he is candid about what he feels isn't right, he points out that his intentions are to make the sport better. Sometimes Denny's presence and opinions on social platforms and in the media have created controversy, but his voice has become one of a leader in the garage. Hamlin opens up about the conversations he's had with NASCAR CEO Jim France about the potential expansion of his team, 23XI Racing, and how they are on hold until further notice. Denny talks about what he needs to see before he and MJ take the two-car operation to the next level.Hamlin lets us in to how he feels about the business model of NASCAR between drivers, tv partners, teams and tracks. He says that the pie is big enough, but it needs to be divided differently. The veteran NASCAR driver pulls no punches in expressing what he believes needs to happen. Hamlin and Earnhardt discuss the state of the charter system in the sport and the pros and cons of starting a team in the Cup Series. If the sport expands to a higher number of charters, how much should a new team pay?Fresh off his second-place run at the NASCAR All-Star Race, Hamlin shares his disappointment in the controversial yellow flag and Ryan Blaney's window net issue. Plus, did his post race comments and use of the "F" word get him in hot water? Denny also explains what he thinks about the All Star Race as a whole and how the event, and other aspects of the sport, have become diluted.Dale Jr. asks Denny, who currently races the FedEx #11 for Joe Gibbs Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series, if he would drive for his own team someday. Earnhardt also gets Hamlin’s insight into the current dynamic at JGR with four full-time drivers, contract questions, and the emerging talent of Ty Gibbs waiting in the wings. What's gonna give? Denny also talks about his exit plan from behind the wheel of a racecar and what that will look like..After struggling for a good chunk of 2022, Hamlin has reached victory lane. The season though, has only resulted in two top-five finishes. Denny gives his take on the Next Gen car's performance and which issues need to be addressed. He talks about Bubba Wallace's performance and 23XI Racing’s big win in Kansas with veteran driver Kurt Busch.DIRTY AIRBefore Denny came to the table, Dale Jr., co-host Mike Davis, Hannah Newhouse and producer Matthew Dillner share some conversation about: The All Star Race and the controversial caution. The Window-net debacle and what should have been done. NASCAR owning one mistake but not the other. What should happen to the All Star Race in the future? Jimmie Johnson's run to the Indianapolis 500 has come with some big risks ASKJR presented by XfinityHannah Newhouse brings fan questions to the table about: Dale Jr.'s wildest appearances, including driving a tank and landing on an aircraft carrier. How Blaney handled the anxiety of the end of the All Star Race. Dale's childhood love for wrestling and how it was stifled in the Earnhardt homestead. Late Night drunken Waffle House orders 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.

Run a mug. Run a mug. I run with some goons. They're pulling off. The following podcast is a production. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Looking for a power. Who, that's us.

We get on the field and running up. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again. Another episode of the Dale Jr. download, 383. Those are some cool numbers. Mike Davis, my co-host, with me here inside the Boat Jr. Django's studio. Matthew's here, Hannah's here,

Hannah's here, everybody is present. That's right. And we got a great guest for you today. Denny Hamlin's going to be on the show. Denny has not been on the show since he has become an owner. I haven't really gotten his perspective on how that's going on in his life. What he's learned. He's really opinionated, shares a lot of his thoughts and opinions on social media.

There was an article in sports, what is it, sports business journal? Sports business journal, that's right. And a lot of opinions. there. So we can't wait to talk to him about that, very animated after the finish of the All-Star race. And yeah, so it's going to be a good conversation. And I know there's a lot of people out there that like Denny, don't like Denny, but he's certainly a very critical role player, right, in this sport. And he will be for a long time, it seems. He's really putting his, building a foundation for

long-term involvement beyond his driving career. So it should be interesting to talk to him and looking for that. But anyways, man, let's get right into some dirty air. What do you think? Let's do dirty air. So Hannah, I mean, I can almost

guess what we're going to talk about. Yeah, did anything happen this weekend? Yeah, it was pretty boring, you know, no big races, no controversy, nothing really to talk about, you know? Well, let's try anyway. Yeah, obviously we have to talk about the All-Star race. everything that happened to there from the caution. And we joked about it in our little group text.

You thought Dale was on vacation, according to his Twitter. What'd you call it, Mike? Vacation Dale. Vacation Dale is good for Twitter Dale. Yeah. Oh, good. Good. Good.

Well, that being said, synopsis, I mean, between the caution, the window net, clearly you were thrilled that Blaney won. Well, I was glad Blaney won because of the mistake NASCAR made throwing the yellow. I felt like that Blaney, he's 50, 100 feet from the finish line. when they threw that caution, that was a huge, you know, that was a big mistake to throw that yellow. There should have been nobody that close to the Twitch at that point. And, you know, we, I think that we ought to flip this sort of mentality

of, you know, wanting to have a yellow, wanting to throw a yellow. You know, if you're managing a race or overseeing an event, your mentality ought to be that I do not want to throw a yellow. I really need a good reason for me to have to stop this race, pause this race. You know, and so that was sort of the way NASCAR operated all for, you know, since its existence, all the way up until somewhere around the early 2000s. Early 2000s. Well, I would go say it's when they started making stage races and competition cautions.

Yeah, but I think even before that, we had those fake debris yellows, Right. They would throw, you have a yellow in the middle of a race. Bunch them up. And nobody, the TV wouldn't even be able to show you where this debris was because it didn't exist. And, or it'd be a piece of tape. And they knew it damn well. It was a piece of tape.

But there was something on the track. And boy, we don't know what it is. And the camera would go to it. And there it is a piece of tape. Oh, boy, we don't know. That's reflective. It could be metal. You know, they just, it was BS, right?

And so I guess my point is, is over the last. a couple of decades, the mentality of throwing yellow flags has went from, we'd rather not do that. We want this race to continue. We want the green flag and the race itself to play out. The mentality has went to give us a reason to throw yellow. We can't wait. They're so damn eager to throw it. They got their hand so close to the button.

They can actually throw a yellow with a car 50 yards from the finish line. I mean, that shouldn't be the, we shouldn't be so eager, you know, to have, to get that. yellow flag out there. I understand the safety aspect, and when it's deemed an issue, they should absolutely have the yellow flag out there and be quick to do it. But, you know, that race was over. And so it was, look, it wasn't exciting. It wasn't an exciting race.

There was some moments when it might have got exciting or was about to get exciting. Ross Chastain was absolutely going to make it interesting had he continued and not had the crash. He was going to get up there and spoil the boring show that we were having. Stage 1 was super boring. And then Ross Chain got in the middle of it. It looked like it's going to get it pretty exciting. Ross Chain.

Ross Justine. Sorry. I like that. Yeah. No, but that was a big crash, by the way. Good point, Mike. Good point, Mike. So, any, the, what's going on back here? What the fuck? Sorry. He's eating a damn rice cake.

What? No, go on. I'm sorry, we didn't mean to interrupt you back here. So, um... Was it as boring as a rice cake? Yeah. They... I don't know how you're going to get back on the rails down. Right in the middle of the...

You were right on talking about. Not during an adrian. It was a boring first segment. So I think that, you know, my point is, is that I was angry about the yellow flag coming out moments before he crosses the finish line. That shouldn't, we shouldn't be so ready to throw a yellow flag. There was no point in throwing that yellow flag. There was no reason to throw it other than to try to salvage.

Manufacture a green white checkered and have some sort of, you know, fireworks in those last final moments that would salvage the night. Yeah. That should never be our mentality. You know, you take the L. Take the L. Right. You're 100% agree with you.

Look, you're going to have great races. You're going to have side-by-side racing. You're going to have boring races. You cannot. You can, we are, we can work, work, work, work, work to try, try, try to make this product as good as possible. We are never going to have 100% amazing side-by-side crazy racing. It's just not possible. Right.

You're going to have to take, like take the L. Take the L, but don't lose your credibility. the process either, which is what happens. That's right. So, and I thought we had kind of learned through the blowback that they got for all of those phantom

debris cautions. You know, we finally sort of seemed, there was enough fan reaction for a while they were throwing the phantom debris cautions and the fan, and thinking the fans were oblivious. Like, of course, there must be yellow. NASCAR would never do anything

you know, shady. Well, finally the fans started responding saying, stop this. I'm tired of these fake yellows, and so they quit doing it. And they just let these races play out. And if you had a boring race, you had a boring race.

So no big deal. You rack them up and go again the next weekend. And that's what I think they, you know, that's what they should have done. They should have let that race finish. Anyways, the cost comes out. Blaney's winning. That comes down because he thinks the race is over.

and now we're in a really big pickle with the, you know, him not being able to get the Winnonet back up, and there's been some images of him finishing the race with the Winnett half down and, you know, all squished back toward the B-Post. And, you know, Bob Pockers and all those other guys are tweeting the rule to the Winnonet. And it's all, you know, now we're all focused on this Winnonet.

Which led to your tweet. Which led to my tweet of, hey, y'all, let's not forget about this damn yellow flag. In fact, your tweet said NASCAR would love for us to be all about the window net because it would distract him from the real issue, which is the original problem that created all that was throwing the yellow. Yes, Mike. So, and that's all I meant by that. It's like NASCAR will be happy for us to all run down the road debating this this windinette issue because Blaney was played a major role in creating that, right, by letting the window net down. Yeah, he messed up.

Yeah, he made a mistake. And so everybody would, you know, I guess in NASCAR's mind, they'd be like, oh, we'll be happy if everybody will forget about that yellow flag we threw. And we can, you know, we can talk about the window net. So anyways, I was just, I was so angry about that. About the yellow flag. I was more angry about the window net. I don't understand why.

I'll tell you why. The yellow flag was an error and they fessed up to it. It was a mistake. They said it was. I wish we wouldn't have thrown that yellow flag. The explanation that was given about the window net, though, to me, was so inconsistent and was an egregious counter to the rulebook that you lose credibility that way. Like the long-term ramifications of sitting there going, oh, yeah, well, it looked like he got his window net up.

I mean, like, think about the years that we've been preaching about safety first, safety first and all this stuff. It's like all of that got tossed out the window. And it matters to me only because we are staunched offenders of the sport. We want it to thrive. We want it to do well. We can sit there. We don't expect perfection. But, you know, NASCAR officials are the adults in the room.

We're the kids. You hope that the adults in the room have control of the situation. And what do adults need to do? They need to be consistent with their rules. And so they fessed up to the mistake of the yellow. But their explanation to the window was not okay. I know, Mike. And that, to me, it's like, okay, now I've got to go somehow defend the credibility of the adults in the room.

And that's what's difficult for me. Like, that's, and, you know, we don't want people to think we're WWE or we don't want to people think that's manufactured. Well, that seemed manufactured because you didn't, there was a blatant rule being broken, and it didn't matter because they were trying to fix the wrong. But that wasn't the way to do that. All right. So that's where my mind just goes, hey, the simple solution is to have never made the mistake of throwing the yellow. We don't have this windonet issue. Sure.

If we don't throw this stupid yellow. Right. And so I feel like that the, you know, the debate over the windinette and right or wrong and what NASCAR should have done, could have done, and what was fair to all the other competitors and everybody was right. Denny was right that, you know, they should have black flagging. I should have. I should have. I should have won to race.

That's true. But I could also agree that with Blaney or the fan that says I should have been able to fix it and get my spot back. But, you know, none of that is, none of that is, I'm not in love with any solution. Even them playing, even, I'm not in love with the fact that it played out and they let him race with the winning out half attached, right? I don't love any of it. No, nor do I. And all of it is a fault of the initial yellow flag. But it was an honest mistake, which they said.

It wasn't a mistake. It was a mistake. They said it was a mistake. They should not have thrown a yellow. Scott Miller said that after the race. I agree, he said that. I agree. They owned it.

Mistake it was not. That was an intentional. They were, they made a rule that's, I don't know if it was, I don't know if the rule is for this specific weekend. I don't know if the rule is just new for this race or it's copy and pasted from years of all-star races where they do not finish under yellow. In typical NASCAR races, when the white flag comes out and the leader crosses the finish line,

if there's a yellow flag or a crash or any reason to throw the yellow flag, that's the end of the race. Whoever's leading at that point, the race is over. But in the all-star race, they have a rule that the race does not end under yellow. No matter if you've gotten the white or whatever, the leader has to take the checkered under green for the race to be finished. And it's only in place for the All-Star race.

And so it's as if they created the mechanism to this issue, right? I don't disagree with that. And it wasn't a mistake. It was all intentional. They were looking for any reason to throw a yellow flag. Okay. I finish your point. And if you've seen the replay of the 47 car go up there and brush the wall,

he brushes the wall momentarily, and then comes down the back straightaway, fine. And he's one of the last cars on the racetrack. I mean, there's nobody behind him in danger. And so they were looking for any kind of, any puff of smoke, any irregular issue going on to have a yellow flag in that last lap. We shouldn't be doing that. And so I don't think, I don't know how you can say that's a mistake. like somebody tripped over the button.

No, that's not what I mean by that. Okay. I mean, listen, NASCAR, we have this debate once a year because they made a judgment call on something that either we agreed with it or we didn't agree with it. So they can make judgment calls. The judgment calls are intentional because they intend to govern the race. They're governing a race, even with a new set of rules for this particular race,

they're doing that. I'm not saying that it was a mistake and that they tripped over the button or something. I'm saying that they fessed up to saying, I wish we wouldn't have had a caution. that was premature to throw that caution. 100%. And they fessed up to it. I wish they would have fessed up to their second error. Okay.

That's all I'm saying. What do you think? Okay. Their second error was this. When asked about it after the race, which was funny because they also asked about your tweet to Scott Miller, which I mean, I told you guys. I want to know the reporter that thought. I think it was Claire that did that. Really?

I think so. I may be wrong. Can't see Claire doing that. But I thought I know she, I thought it would be Jenna, but she was in India, I'm sure. I don't know. I don't know. Listen, I was proud of Claire. She was holding their feet to the fire, I thought, in her questioning. But here's the thing. They said, we're fully transparent. When we make mistakes, we're going to own up to our mistakes. That's what Scott said. Scott Miller said that. And so when it came to the caution, he goes, yep, I wish we had not thrown a caution. That was not the way to do that, right? He wishes he hadn't. They ask about the window net. That's where his answer started going a little wonky. Because, I thought that, you know, when he was like, well, it looked like it was up. Well, no, wait a second.

Everybody, and I don't know this, you're a driver, everybody that knows about getting those window nets up knows that a driver can't get it up when they're in the seat of the car. Like that's, you know, you see those big muscle guys that are sitting there, you know, straining and getting that thing latched on properly. And that's, the window net is obviously a safety mechanism. So I just was saying it would have made me feel better to own that. mistake too and saying, listen, here's what should have happened. Here's what should have happened.

We shouldn't have guessed that the window net was up because I think that all the smart people, the adults in the room, know that it wasn't going to be fully up. Like, it wouldn't have protected Ryan in a case of a crash. What we should have done is we should have black flagged him. Unfair as it is, and I'm not saying anybody loves that. But the fact of the matter is if you stick to the rules, even when you're at the risk of upsetting a lot of people. The fact is you've got to be consistent with your rules or you'll lose credibility. And my whole point on this is that, look, own your mistakes, but don't sit there and try to excuse a mistake because now you got, now you introduce all of the conspiracies and all that stuff. What happens when the next driver wants to put his window net down or makes the same mistake?

What are you going to do? Let him do the same thing with Ryan? No, you've got to be consistent. That's a, Ryan took the window net down. The caution did come out before he crossed the checker, before he took the checker. It's a fact. We saw the lights. It was 100 yards, but it was before he did it.

He took his window net down. It would have been unfair because that race was one. But they had a mistake that they threw the yellow, and they should have been consistent. You can't let that race go for a green-white checker, especially with Denny Hamlin behind you and, you know, those guys. there could have been a crash. And then, think about then. I mean, Denny Hamlin said there was, you know, now you're talking lawsuits.

Look at the can of worms. You just got to say, look, it was a mistake. That's the only part I had a problem with. But I think the ramifications are bigger by not owning up to it. Yeah. Like, if they would have said to yellow, if their explanation would have been reversed, they would have been like,

we should have brought him down and black flagged him for the window net. However, for the caution, completely justifiable. You would have been like, wait a second. No, just own it. That was not justifiable. Nope, we didn't know if Ricky was going to get out of that mess. Ricky Stenhouse was in the wall and we thought that there was big time danger.

You would have been like, oh, horses. That is not, you would have called BS to it because now it's a credibility thing. You're insulting our intelligence. I felt like we were getting our intelligence insulted by the explanation of the window net. Just own it too. Yeah. You know, take the loss. This race came with a big L, you know, when it comes down to it.

Which, by the way, I think that you want to get to the root of the problems. But go back and have the All-Star race conversation on, you know, big picture stuff. Yeah, as far as where it is. Where it is, how do you fix it? Do you even fix it? Do we need it? I mean, there's a lot of things that we could talk about. I don't know.

Have we taken over dirty air, Hannah, pretty much? We kind of expected it on this one, to be honest with you. Get dirty. Good old Indy 500 this weekend. Yeah. Well, I think before we jump to the Indy 500, the All-Star Race absolutely needs to exist. It can be fixed. It ain't going to be a home run every year.

We've got to understand some years it's just going to get, you know, they're just going to be a guy that dominates it. There's just going to be a guy that we don't want to see win it. There's just, it's never going to be this, you know, this. this perfect experience. I think for the people that were present at the racetrack, a large majority of them probably enjoyed

their time. There was a lot of things going on before the race, concerts and all that. And so it isn't far. I don't think it's very far from like flipping a few switches and buttons, no pun intended,

and getting it right. Getting it where it's something something that pleases everybody. I think the experience for people watching at home, something about that, I think, needs to change a little bit for the All-Star race. Because I believe that most of the negativity, and I had this experience. Most of the negativity, I think, comes from the people that are actually watching it on TV,

or not actually present at the racetrack itself. I know there were some people at the track I heard from that didn't enjoy it, thought the race wasn't that great. But anyways, can you agree, though, that it's not at the right track right now? I don't know. You won't go so far. You would be okay if it stays at Texas.

I would rather see it at, you know, somewhere else. I mean, there's a lot. I love all the ideas pouring in. I don't love the ideas. I love the fact that there's a lot of ideas coming in, because it's what's going to take. It's going to take a lot of opinions in sifting through. and hearing some pretty interesting concepts to really land on something that's going to be new and

unique, but yet at the same time not so far removed from the identity of the race, that's the worst thing that can happen is that the race, much like the clash, has lost its identity. And it gets so far removed from its original intention that it doesn't really even matter anymore. That will be a travesty. That will be a – I mean, now the clash this past year was great, but it's not the clash we know. that's a whole different exhibition that we had at the Coliseum. And that's fine.

It felt like an all-star race, as a matter of fact. It kind of did. Yep. And that's okay if they want to, if they, if they want this new addition of the clash, as is going forward, that's fine. But it would be, it would suck if we kind of lost what the identity of the All-Star race is and what it's about. And, but it's just a couple, it's just a couple changes away from, I think, getting

approval from the masses. And they may be getting to a point with Texas to where they're going to make some changes physically to make that track what they want it to be. There's no way they give up on that market. No. There's no way we leave that facility. No.

So that facility will probably more than likely need some sort of physical changes or adjustments. And that's probably in its future. I had to guess. So I'm still positive on Texas Motor Speedway in its future in this sport. But I would love to see the All-Star Race go to Nashville Fairgrounds. I know that people just knew that was coming out of my mouth. North Wilsonboro would be a cool venue to go to once they revamp and repave that place.

I mean, imagine the eyeballs and people that would be tuned in to see that. So it'd be insane It'd be fantastic The SRX series Kind of proves that So the problem Yeah so that is a great point So the XRS series

Which I hate to really Spotlight it too much Because I'm not kind of I'm not real sure where I am on How I feel about it Right but they'll pack them out I think it is a great sort of That's what the All Star Race could be

If it did travel around to some of these racetracks Maybe that we don't typically compete at Anyways I think that I think there's a lot of opportunity to get it right and we'll see how it goes. We'll see what they end up doing. I don't think, I know Marcus Smith came out on the airways this week and said, man, we feel pretty good about Texas and it staying at Texas. And I think that he, I think that he needs to say that.

I think that that's, that's no offense to Marcus, but I think that's a company line. He can't, he can't say, man, the All-Star races at the wrong track. He owns the track. Right. He's got to craft his message to where it's a positive message, and he's not going to turn his back on his own speedway. I do know that he absolutely knows what's going on, and what he absolutely is, the gears are turning in his head.

Of course they are, yeah. About how to make this a home run. Right. And he is not against taking it to a different facility. And he, but he just has to say the right thing in the moment to make sure that he's not turning his back on his own race track and his own employees. Well, Marcus has earned the right for us to trust him and that he'll get it figured out on that. Like, he's earned that right.

And people would say, no, the All-Star race has been boring for a while. Yeah, but look at what he's done with Wilkesboro. Look at what he did with Atlanta. I mean, the dude will move. Look, what he does with, you can't, you don't have to agree with everything he does. But the dude has irons in the fire. He makes bold moves, and he does it for the betterment of the racing product and the fans. So like I like to see that Marcus, if he's in control, he'll figure it out.

I would encourage everybody. Jeff Burton had a lot of good points about this on Door Bumper Clear this week. So that, I mean, his idea is to take that thing to some of the short tracks, you know, Hickory, you know, Wilkesboro, some of those tracks. The one I've heard the most that I liked the most was Jordan Bianchi said on he and Jeff Gluck's podcast, The Tear Down, was put that thing at the time. was put that thing at the end of the year during banquet week at Nashville Fairgrounds where it's like it's a special race during an exciting week where the energy is up and you know we're celebrating the year you know it's bookend where you got the clash doing its thing at the beginning of the year and you do an all-star race at the end of the year at Nashville

Fairgrounds because it seems like that we're staying in Nashville for a long time I love that idea right I mean like that's that would be exciting not a lot of pressure in terms of you know having to create rules. Like, forget the rules. Let's just leave the rules out. It's too complicated. And I think by now let's listen to what people are saying about that. The rules are too complicated. Nobody likes it. So do a traditional freaking race already. Do it at a track. That would be a market track. It would. That's a great idea. I mean, I don't hate any of those ideas. That's what I mean when I say, whoever's got an opinion, let's all, put it all in the bucket, right?

Because we wouldn't never, if we were just listening to a select few people, we would never appreciate Jordan's idea, your idea, or my ideas. And so I think somewhere in there is a great format at a great facility at a great time in the year. And it all, we got to have an open mind about it. But, you know, we do need to keep it about the winners. You know, for me, the clash is, you know, the clash is for pole winners and the All-Star race is race.

is race winners. That's the two identities of those two races. And so we've got to hang tight on to that. So Hannah mentioned we got the ND 500 coming up this weekend. I'm going into town on Thursday. I'm going to work to pit box with Townsend Bell during the pre-race, and I'll be on the pit box as well during the race. They'll be dropping in every once in a while talking to us.

I'm excited about that. There's been some pretty awesome things happening at the racetrack. We've all been paying attention to Jimmy. Scott Dixon had that amazing qualifying run, crazy fast speeds Jimmy's been doing great in practices we've been paying attention and he just texts me this morning

wondering if I was gonna when I was getting into town but looking forward to seeing that and him showing me around a little bit when we get some free time but that's gonna be I hope that Jimmy has a good day I hope that Marco has a great day

Marco's competing there's some cool storylines woven inside you know those two storylines including others woven into the race and into the field. You also got the traditional players and guys that you expect to run well and compete.

But I think it's shaping up for a pretty cool race. Really pulling for Jimmy, man. You know, I think he all those Gannasi cars are stupid fast. They are. So like I'm going off of the fact that he does better on ovals, for sure. He showed that at Texas. Man, I am pulling so hard

for Jimmy. I can't remember a time when I've been I'm going to pull so hard for a driver in the Indy 500. Usually I just like to watch the race. and I appreciate anybody that's up there just mixing it up, right? And it's always a fantastic race. But this one, I'm putting in my Jimmy Johnson gear, man. I'm wanting him to win this thing. It would be so cool.

I really have thought about this next opinion and whether I should share it or not, because Jimmy's a seven-time champion and has a lot of experience, and you wouldn't think that there's anybody out there that would have an opinion about his approach. But as we watched him over the past couple of weeks, he's had a couple close calls. And that makes me so nervous that he might be pushing harder than necessary. I know he is so badly wanting to take control and grab this by the horns and show everybody that he can do this. And I think in his passion to prove himself, I'm worried that he's pushing too hard.

Yeah. Because he's really got, he's had a couple close calls, you know what? we've seen, it seemed like, you know, as things got, and I really, I, I only, I kind of base my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my he started later in the cup series. As things, as things got harder or more difficult as it was more difficult for him to find success, and there were some struggles within the teams and the cars, the, he started, he would make, he started making mistakes that were a characteristic of Jimmy. and contact whether the cars or self-spins and things like that, you know, leading it Darlington in his final year and spins off turn two

a couple laps from the end of the stage. And one of the best races he was having in that final season. But there's just those moments, I think, where we're like, man, that's a, I didn't even surprised to see Jimmy do that. And it showed a side of him, I think, where, you know, when things aren't going the way he expects, or the way we expect, he pushes harder. He pushes harder and harder and harder and harder.

And we see him go over that line time and time again in the road course IndyCar experience over the years. You know, there's a lot of spins and practice and in the race and all those moments where he's just really having a hard time understanding where the limit is and he keeps going over it for this car and understanding where the grip is and the tire and so forth. and I've watched him. He's got a very fast car.

He is absolutely talented enough with a great race car to go out there and place himself anywhere in the top five in this race. And I'm worried that he's pushing so hard that he's going to put himself in a bad situation. If he, you know, that thing can't take to me shots to the wall. Like he got lucky the other day when he hit the wall off too. that he didn't break a toe link or anything like that. And that would have been catastrophic, right? Oh, yeah. He'd have turned him back into the wall or into the infield one way or another.

But that thing took, the Indycars usually don't take that kind of abuse. So I'm just worried. I'd like Jimmy maybe to dial it back a little bit and just try to be a little more conservative. Like Rick Mears. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, have a conversation with Rick Mears before you're doing. I'm nervous that he's like up on his skis. right over he's no

that's a it's a valid reason it's valid because he does do that and the fact of the matter is we you know we did an interview with Jimmy that's dropping all this week and we dropped some episode or some clips yesterday where he was talking about he's still learning this car like he's still trying to get rid of you know

driving habits that NASCAR that he formed all these years of NASCAR that absolutely not only do not apply to Indy car but they're detrimental to his IndyCar and so that's a process and he's not completed that yet. So that's one thing. The other thing, I think back to Alex Palo last year, I mean, I want Jimmy to win this, but I'm not so delusional to think that it's, that just because he

has a fast car, he has good chances to win. I think it's a, I think it's slim chance that he wins, because at the end of the day, like how Castor Nevis absolutely took Alex Polo to school on those last laps, experience absolutely matters in this thing, right? Like, you've got to know. how to do this thing and that you know you see the best out there that just when it comes down to it you can forget the speed in the cars the experience actually matters and the driving ability matters so jimmy's not bringing that to the table um so yeah i hope he just tries to go a little bit more conservative i would i would get to the end i only say that because i want him to get to the end i want him to have that finish that he's proud of and i'm just worried that he's going he's trying so hard uh

And feeling, you know, his teammates are fast, his cars are fast, and he's, he's just, you know, it's got to be incredible. How is he, how he's managing the excitement, the motivation, the adrenaline, right? It's got to be the most craziest experience he's ever had as a race car driver going through this whole process for the Indy 500. Incredible race. He understands the importance of it, and he feels that he's standing down and, on pit road during qualifying while all that's going on going, holy smokes. You know, he's going to stand on that grid for the very first time. I know he's been to the Indy 500, but until you, you know, if you've been to the Indy 500 and you see all those people, you realize how big of a race it is.

You realize how much bigger of a race it is than anything you're ever going to experience in NASCAR. And now for the first time he's going to be standing there getting ready to climb into one of those race cars, the emotion and nerves and all that will be, will be more. more than he's ever experienced in his life. And so it's pretty interesting to watch him go through this process. And I just want it to be something that in the end, he's happy with, you know, man, I got through the race, whatever the result is, it's hopefully going to be wanting a smile about. He talks about this in an upcoming clip in Next Level with Andrew Curlin, so that's something

to look forward to everybody talking about being on the grid, you know, in your first 8500, what he expects on that when you're just talking about it he starts to get chills so yeah those feelings are real yeah those feelings are real um you're gonna see him this week tell him what's up i'm nervous i thought there's been a couple times where i've wanted to text him like hey man do it kind of you okay you go you're pushing pretty hard but he's how do you say how you can't how do nobody can do that he's jimmy josson or you could do it because you're you love him and he's a friend of yours and you want the best best for him yeah That's a good point. I was going to say I talked to him throughout the month of May, like having been there for GP and asked him about, you know, if he was nervous or whatever. And he said honestly, and granted, he's probably going to give me a different answer than what's going on in his brain. But he was like just being here at the month of May and getting to do the whole thing. And this is before the fast 12 qualifying run that he had. So I think he was just like, he had the family there. They got to be there, got to experience the month of May. And he was like, I'm just honored to be here and excited to get to do this. And then, of course, you got there and you turn a top 12 qualifying time. And I think that.

mentality like you said switches it was like oh hey i have a shot at this now like this is pretty cool just read the room when you're hanging with him on friday or whatever like no no seriously if y'all you're doing some stuff for nbc with him right i'm sure i'll be seeing him so look if he looks like he's overly confident and he's like i'm gonna just i'm gonna go mad it man i'm gonna put it to the freaking floorboard i ain't gonna lift until i ain't saying a word to him then you should be like is that the best i did jim i think i mean if there's good confidence then you're just to leave that alone. But if I feel like that he seems

anxious and overwhelmed, then you can then that's when you look at somebody and go, hey man it's fine, you're just chill out a little bit. It's going to be good. You got a fast car man? Long race. Super long race. I mean, it is. It's the longest race. It's kind of like the Daytona 500

in terms of, I always tell people that Daytona 500 is kind of like a season in itself. The ups and downs and things you go through the mistakes on pit road and whatever, and you're going to have all kinds of things happen to you on the track choices and decisions that are good that you didn't make, that were bad, and runs you should have took that you didn't take, and you're going to ebb and flow throughout the field, and it lasts forever.

And that N2 500, in my mind, is one of those races you sort of trudged through, right, lap after lap after lap, and just taking care of everything, taking care of the car, not making big mistakes. and he's going to hope that he's got that in the back of his mind like man it's a long race this ain't a sprint we need to have chad ganouse texting i'm sure that that is going to happen yeah i'm sure at some point him and chad will communicate on the you know do that part where chad do that part where you tell him how to drive a race car not sure that that will go over well for all the time's sake yeah i will say that i will say that that spending the day in that paddock.

Those guys, it's such a laid-back vibe compared to the old Hender group. And I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you, you wouldn't believe how many people, even from other pits, came over to the 48 pit. And we weren't even wearing Dirty Mo swag that are huge fans of Dirty Mo Media, what you're doing, what you guys are doing here, lost speedways, door bumper clear. It was insane.

It was actually a little weird. I thought we were going to be like foreigners. kind of in a foreign land. And it was like, crew chiefs are coming up to me and like, give me the Jimmy steering wheel. Check this out, blah, blah, blah. And hey, let's do hat swaps. And it was super cool. That sounds great.

Glad he had a great experience. We should ask Matt. You know, he was there working on that piece with Jimmy. So what's the vibe? What's Jimmy's vibe? Jimmy's vibe is just like Jimmy's vibe in Cup. You know, same dude. You know, got out of the car.

I was kind of like trying to be small, which is hard for me. but he came over and was like, hey, dude, what are you doing here? And then afterwards in the paddock, you know, we had about a 15-minute conversation about the car and the differences and this and that. And it was the same gym. He was super late back. That guy never seems nervous or uptight. He's something else.

All right, I'm super excited to have Ally help us bring in our guest segment, Ally, supporting the show this year and sponsoring our guest segments every week. I understand how important it is, Mike, to have great Ally. in your career and in your life professionally and personally. And so, yeah, let's get started with our guest segment here. It's been a while since Denny Hamlin's been on the download. The last time he was, I think we were actually in the booth. We didn't even have a table.

That's right. So it's good to actually have Denny back in the studio. And boy, do we have a lot of things to talk about. Yeah, there's a lot changed in his life, so we'll get to it. So let's welcome Denny Hamlin to the Dell Jr. Download. So let's welcome Denny Hamlin into the room. So let's get Danny Hamlin on the table. Let's get Danny Hamlin at the table.

Get his ass in the seat. So let's get Denny Hamlin in the chair. So let's get Denny Hamlin on the mic. With Mike. So let's get Denny Hamlin here with Mike. Everything looking bad. Got me feeling like the man. I never let this moment out my hand.

Got me feeling like the man. Like the man. Feeling like the man. Like the man. Like the man. I feel like the man. Race fans, if you would now, please give a warm. Welcome to the driver of the FedEx Express Toyota Camry.

Denny Hamlet! Damn, there he is. What's up? Come on in, have a seat. You got an Elvis shirt. I know. Look at this. For him.

You're wearing shirts for him? You're trying to play to the crowd? I am. It's pretty smart. I know he's a fan of Elvis. I saw the shirt and I was like, I'm wearing the Elvis. You just had that in the closet? Yeah.

I love it. Hey, do you remember when the last time we did this, we were in that little room? Yeah. It's actually that room. That's it. It's tight. It's hard to imagine doing that. Are you going to Blaine's top golf deal tonight?

I'm not. I've got an appearance at O'Charly's. What's there? This evening. Coca-Cola appearance. Yeah. All right. What's happening?

Just meat and greet. Standard. Where's O'Charly's? In Concord. How do you get a local appearance? Usually you have to travel. Yeah, no. He probably worked it in his deal.

Smartly. He's not traveling anywhere. You get your deal. It's very rare, actually, that we travel to many appearances. I mean, nothing like we used to do way back in the day. It's crazy how much it's changed. Oh, geez. Yeah.

All we had to do is get rid of him, right? Like, as soon as he left the sport, everything started. Everything started recent. They were only traveling because they thought you wanted to travel to appearances. I could have stopped all that. They blamed it on Jeff Gordon. That's ours. So, man, we were talking about it.

It's been a long time since you've been on here. and a lot's happened in your life since then. Most notably, becoming an owner in the series and a winning owner, y'all got two wins now. Pretty incredible to have that sort of jail so quickly. I know in your mind it's probably been much more frustrating and, you know, plotting along the progress. But from our perspective, you know, your cars have speed and you got two great drivers and things seem like they're going really well.

So how are they going? Like you said, it's been more trying time. and frustration times because, you know, as racers, you want to see results right now. And it's like, you know, I know what it takes to be successful. And, you know, you can give them your playbook all you want. You can give them all the information, but they still have to go out and execute. They still have to have great pick crew. They still have to have all the things that it takes to win.

And that's a lot of pieces of the puzzle you've got to put together. And sometimes it just takes time. I mean, the people that you go out and you try to recruit, everyone in this sport that's any good, They got contracts at last years. And so, you know, those conversation starts years in advance. All right, when you're done, let's talk. And, you know, that's why I think that honestly it's going to be, it's a five-year plan that I've laid out, you know, for Michael and our partners, Curtis. And, you know, saying, you know, if we want to be a championship contending team, have a car in the final four competing for a championship, it's going to be a five-year plan.

And I truly believe that that's truly the timeline that's going to take. Yeah. Where's your shot? Right now it's in the business park in Mooresville, but we bought some land on I-77, right where 485 kind of meets right there, right near Robbie Gordon's, but it's on 77. So we bought 20 acres there, and we're patiently waiting to see how things go over the next year or so. So what does that mean? We saw the Business Sports Journal article where you had a conversation with Jim France, and you basically told him that you were going to pause any big spins until. you saw what the new deal is.

We just need to know that they care about the people that put on their show every week. And ultimately, we don't know where the next TV deal goes. It could be flat. It could be down. It could be up. You know, that's all to be determined. But in general, I think that, you know, there's certain model changes that need to be made for it to be a feasible long-term business. I talked and actually was on social media and read something this morning actually replied to and they were like the sport was so much better when it had 36 good old boys as owners and I said FYI they just all went about out of business.

You know, they all went out of business. And I know that me and you have talked extensively about it. And you came out openly, I think last year saying, you know, it's, you know, maybe now or never, no time to start a cup team. But you have your reservations as well. And a lot of the conversations that I had with Jim were very honest. And I said, you know, I just want to hear it straight from you. You know, it's, I think we've got great people in place.

Steve Phelps, Steve O'Donnell, all those guys are really, really good for our sport. and I think that they understand the challenges that the teams have, but you haven't pulled the trigger for a reason as well. Because it's still TBD on, you know, are they open to, you know, making changes to make this more sustainable? What changes have to be made? I mean, the easiest is, you know, the pie is big enough. You just got to divide it differently.

Redistribute the money. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, we are in a sport where we have to rely on sponsorships. and in a world where sponsorship dollars has so many different places it can go now. I mean, you can go have your name on the front of an MLS team for what we charge half a season for. So there's just so many more options now for these companies to spend their money that we're scratching and clawing to get the sponsorship. Where it used to be, if you wanted your name out there, you had to put it on a race team. And you saw, you know, take a snapshot of a 1995 cars or 2000s, you saw the same car every single week, right?

And you just knew it. It was the tied car, the Quaker State car. It was just, it was so recognizable. And now, I mean, there's no way, even someone that follows a sport, you take a picture of Talladega and they won't know whose cars what. Because we just have to split it up. I mean, honestly, Bob Wallace's Walsh's car's got nine sponsors this year. So it's just, you know, that's just the way it is. model needs to change. Yeah, it can't be, it can't be, it can't be sponsorship based. It can't,

you know, the reliability of the teams, we shouldn't have to tread water based off of a CMO's decision. And the moment, you know, and the average CMO's lifespan at a Fortune 1000 company is 13 months. Right. So, so we can't, you know, we're just hoping and praying that the next CMO loves racing or loves what we have to offer as much as the previous one. And sometimes they don't. Yeah, they love cricket. Guess where their money's going. They're going to cricket. Right. You know, whatever it is. When did the conversation start about what the next deal looks like? So the TV deal is part of it, but also the relationship and agreement between the RTA and NASCAR, all that's going to be rewritten as well. So when does that conversation, real talks start to happen?

You know, I think I probably got to tread a little lightly because there's a, you know, there's a committee that talks directly to NASCAR. My partner's on that. And they talk about behind the scenes of what the next deal will look like, what additional rights, what might they need from us to maximize their deal. And that's something that that is what in my mind holds our sport back so much is that everyone is fighting for their own rights. The track has its rights. NASCAR has its rights and the teams have its rights. And as a sponsor, the playbook to become part of this sport is so complicated because, like, for instance, we had a sponsor for Kurt Bush for Richmond, but yet they couldn't go to Richmond and activate it because NASCAR had a sponsor there. And they're like, you can't come to our track and activate.

And we're like, wait, what? You know, you can't rely on us to find a sponsor to fill the gaps. But yet not allow them to get the value of their money. That just makes no sense. And so there's just so many things we can do better that I wish we could do better. But there's a lot of long-term contracts. It's got to expire for us to get there. So you're a race car driver, but you're an owner.

Is it switching hats? Do you ever kind of get the wires crossed where you're like, wait a minute, what do I really won't here? Because, you know, I know when I was just a driver, I had a very narrow mind of this is what I think we ought to. be doing. And then when I became a broadcaster, I was like, wait a minute, some of my ideas as your driver were not very good ideas and not the best thing for the sport. And so I know that you've learned a lot as an owner, but do you think mostly owner, even when you're behind the wheel of the

car? I mean, how is how is that changing for you as far as your approach? Behind the wheel, it is driver and driver only. Outside, it's mostly owner. It really is. I mean, for instance, you know, we have, instead of a driver's meeting now, we have the thing called 1948, where they have host, you know, prospective sponsors or bigwigs or, you know, VIPs for teams. And, you know, there's a, we, at 2311, we host a lot of our sponsors there. And it's an ability for them to meet multiple drivers. Now, of course, my drivers spout off to NASCAR about it. Oh, it's just a waste of time. This is BS, whatever. And I'm just like, shut up. Like, this is good for our team. Like, that's how we kind of talk to sponsors and like, you know, I know it's a pain in the ass, but like, we need it.

And so, you know, that's where it's like, you know, I see both sides. And you, if you were a driver, you know, five, ten years ago, you'd be like, what am we doing this for? It's stupid. Yeah. But so I heard about that, 1948. So basically explain what that experience is like. Yeah. So we used to have, as y'all know, driver's meetings and they would have, you know, dignitaries there that they would introduce and kind of, it would.

it was way for them to see all the drivers and the drivers to kind of sit down and let a lot of people essentially just look at us because we had seen that we had seen that video for a very long time and nothing was new on the driver's meeting video but instead of that and that went away during COVID obviously for those reasons but now they're introducing 1948 which is essentially a way for it's mostly filled with team guests so that NASCAR is allowing each team to bring, let's just call it six to eight people, maybe it's sponsors, maybe it's VIPs, maybe it's a prospective sponsor into that. And now they get, it's kind of a glad handing and you're kind of mosing around and, you know, meeting different people. And for me, I like it because I'm able to knock out a couple meet and greets for 2311 and Joe Gibbs Racing right there in one swoop. And not only that, I mean, there are people that aren't affiliated with any teams. just there, maybe they're a NASCAR perspective sponsor or whatever, and you meet them, you strike up a conversation, next to you know, you maybe get a deal out of it. Yeah,

sounds pretty good. I can't tell if you're, when you're tweeting and when you're being vocal, I've always wondered if NASCAR looks at you as a driver or if they've accepted you as an owner and respected you that way. Do you feel respected as a team owner in the sport? You do feel. So you feel like you can go to them in your opinions or your, you're, you're, Your ideas are taken seriously as a team owner and not a driver. I do. Now, on the tweets, I would say that, listen, I've pushed the envelope for a while on that. But I think that as a team owner, you know, I said yesterday, like, I've got enough invested and enough information that I feel like, you know, I can have my opinion, right?

They may not like it. And maybe not all team owners might not like it. but, you know, it's from what I've seen in the sport for the last 20 years. And so I want us to see us get better. It's frustrating that we, you know, we kind of get stuck in a rut of doing things the way we always used to because we always used to. That drives me crazy. And so I think that if we want to appeal to a new audience, which we need to, you know, we have the oldest age audience, 62 years old is the average age. And God love them. They've been part of watching our sport for decades. That's fantastic. But you got to get their kids involved. You got to get

their kids involved in watching. And so it's just, it's a different world now than it used to be just five to 10 years ago, much less two, you know, two decades ago. And we have to get with the times a little bit. And I think that that's what I really push for a lot. You know, I've said for many years, like, man, we just got to upgrade our facilities. You know, we've got people just expect more nowadays, right? I mean, they love concierge. They want to sit in Lexa Stadium in a cushy seat and have someone come bring them drinks and popcorn. It's just asking people to sit in aluminum bleachers for four to five hours on 99 degree day. It's just not realistic anymore. So I just, that's, you know, kind of the forefront of where I think that we can continue to get better. And not only that,

you know, honestly, the tracks receive so much of the money, they should be reinvesting it in our sport because if they pocket it, it's not helping our sport grow. Talk about the car. You've NASCAR's new car. You've had some time to drive it this year. Are you enjoying the next gen? You know, I'm getting used to it for sure. It's got its challenges and I think that it's had some positives. I certainly think that we've come a long way since probably September when I tested it last year. I was thinking, you know, we are in big, big trouble. And I think the NASCAR thought we are in big, big trouble, which is why they came to the teams and said, you know, help us out here. Like, you know, we need y'all to help with the competition side of it.

And the car drove really, really bad. I had some design flaws and the teams worked on it and it's got better. But it's still, I mean, I fight some steering issues and you heard this past week some steering issues. Like what? I don't know. The steering's binding up and it's just, it's got some nuances to it that it's just very, very weird that if everything's not perfectly aligned, it creates binding and then grinding and then it

freezes. It's just, uh, that's one thing. And I mean, there's just a, there's a laundry list. We could go all day on it. But, but, but from my perspective, like, we got to be fixing it now because of the supply chain issues that we have with the car. You have to, you would have to tell the manufacturers of the parts and pieces. I need this change now for next year. And I don't, you know, we've already seen a Texas yikes you know we've got you know on one lane especially flat tracks it's got some issues um you know just simply from the competition standpoint trying to pass it's just very very very very difficult um we have to redesign some stuff in the car to do that but it's just it's going to take forever like so we need to be testing now to fix the things for next year what's

wrong with the short tracks i don't know i think that from the people people that are much smarter than me and have education way higher is that, you know, we design these cars and they've got those flat, the flat bottom. Well, it's, we also have rub blocks on the bottom of them to, to space it to where we don't rub the bottom of the car and then, because that's like $50,000, $50,000. But if you don't get it low, like an Indy car or an F1 car, it's low to the ground, so it's sucking itself to the ground. And that's what creates the downforce, which that's consistent whether you're behind someone or not. But we're so high off the ground that it's not creating any suction zone. It's not sucking the other.

So it's all overbody. In the minute you get behind someone, you just lost all of your down force because you don't have any on the underbody anymore. And that's just that may be right or wrong, but that's just what I've heard is that it wasn't designed to have rub blocks, but we have to have them as team owners because we can't afford to keep replacing 50,000 underbodies every single week because we would run them right on the ground, as you know. And so, You know, short of us all having a huge carbon department that fixes them. And, you know, once we start fixing them, you know how that's going to go. We're going to start tweaking them and making them illegal.

That's not part of the design of the car. So they're just in a bad spot because we cannot afford to keep tearing up the underbody. Do you think they'll be able to get the car better for a race like Martinsville? Yeah. They've got to get rid of shifting first. That's the easiest thing they can get rid of is the shifting. I always said in short track racing and just general. oval racing. It's all momentum-based. That's how you make passes. Somebody makes a mistake,

and then you capitalize, and your momentum gets you beside them, and then you complete the past, because they've lost momentum. Well, what we saw at Martin'sville, what I saw is that people could miss the corner completely, downshift, and then gone. It's like, wait a minute. Like, you know, there's no penalty to, you know, driving like, it's like you got to, you can just completely blow the corner. So I think they really got to get. get down, they got to figure out the shifting. And they, NASCAR and the OEMs have lowered the RPM target this year and by like three or 400 RPM, I believe.

And that's created us. I mean, we almost had to, well, there was probably half the field that shifted at Texas. On a track we were nearly wide open at, they were still shifting. So we got to, they can fix it with the software, but I think they're having trouble getting all the OEMs to agree to the same software. Has the teams built up inventory yet? Because, like, you know, at the beginning of the year, there was that concern. Like, if you wreck a car, you don't have a backup.

And, you know, Hendricks taking one backup for all four teams. Yeah. Where are we at with the inventory? It's getting better. It's certainly getting better for sure. I think that our team, now, we crashed a lot. I mean, our cars got demolished, like, four weeks in a row, like, both of them. And it was just, like, I was just sweating.

Because, I mean, the good news is we just kind of horse trade with JGR. Like, we're like, hey, they're not wrecking. so like can I borrow this for a few weeks and I'll pay you back when I get my shipment in? Like we're just horse trading parts back and forth because we have an affiliation and NASCAR approve that because they know that like we can't have a car not not have enough parts to start. But that part has gotten better for sure. They're catching up. But early in the season we were wrecking more than the manufacturers could keep up with, you know,

production of it. So I think that has slowly gotten better. and we're not at our full car count like they wanted us to be, which is really honestly almost a third of what we are used to. I think that at times they think it's a luxury to have six to seven cars when it's not. You've got to prepare weeks in advance or else these guys work 70 hours a week. And that's what we did early in the season. We were working a ton of hours.

So how do you fix Texas? Start with a bulldozer. Yeah. I'm going to give you reasonable amount of money. what's reasonable. Like whatever it's going to take to repofile, repave, whatever you want to do. But you can't, it's going to stay a mile and a half.

I can't let you tear to Grandstands down and reconfigure the track. No, no, you can't do that. You have to, you have to repave it in some sort. I hate to say, like, you know, we need another Atlanta or Tal'Dague or whatever, but there's just no, the surface has gotten ruined by the PJ1. So it's just you can't, I don't think they can scrape it enough and wash it enough to get that stuff. off. Right. Would you reprofile turns one or two?

Back the way it was? Yeah. Yeah. It's just like I said, the flatter the track, the worst the aerodynamics are. It's just not, for this car, it's just not working that well. So you'd almost have to turn it into the higher banked Atlanta type track, which you know, if we have another one, we have another one. How do you think the car is going to race at Homestead with progressive banking? I think it'll be good. I think it'll be good

because as you've seen, the cars have been good on tracks where you can avoid the other person. Go to a different lane completely. You know, Kansas, while the main line was up at the wall, you still could hedge down one car length and get the area you needed. Vegas, same way. So I think that Homestead will be good for that reason. You're going to have a couple guys on the fence, and I think you'll have others, since it's low horsepower, going to take the shortest distance on the wall at the bottom, and they're probably going to meet in the middle. Would you progressive banking, would you put that at Texas?

If you're going to cut it up, might as well. Might as well. I mean, there's, I mean, how much of that track is unused, right? I mean, we're using 15 feet wide of, I don't know, it feels like a hundred foot wide racetrack. Yeah, you do something to make it, you know, where these cards, they go into the corner and one goes that way, one goes this way, and then what happens when they get back to the straightaway?

that to me is what creates an interesting concept. And so we've seen it at short tracks too where you have progressive banking and someone takes the shortest route. They ain't going to make the exit, but they have to use the guy up on the outside to make it. So when you told Jim that you were kind of pausing your investments or you're bigger, you know, you're going to, you got this land, you're going to build this awesome facility that's your hope one day, but you're going to wait. What does that mean like in terms of the performance for your business?

your team, your future contracts with drivers and all that, all that stuff. It doesn't affect that. It affects expansion more than anything. How many teams do you want to have? I think probably three is the proper number. I think that when you think, look at efficiencies when it comes to your personnel, the departments that you have, that you gain from one to two. That's good. Three is another slight gain. And then a fourth team is like hiring a whole new. team again. You've got to hire the additional people. So it's, it's three is a, it's kind of a good sweet spot for your resources. Yeah. So it's, for people listening, it's cheaper to run two teams rather

than one. Three is again, another step cheaper, but four for you, you think is. From what we've seen. Yeah. Now that could change. I mean, I think that we've seen that, you know, especially Joe Gibbs racing and we're kind of looking at what they're doing. They kept most of their people, uh, just as a wait and see. Like, what are they going to let us work on? How much are we really going to be able to cut here? And that's not a good word. I hate that word in our sport. But they're just kind of, we're waiting to see how many people do we really need.

And we're so fortunate to come in the sport when we did simply because, you know, you look at how much legacy people, legacy departments, legacy buildings people have. Now we get to build it from the ground up as we see fit. it now, that's a huge advantage versus a Joe Gibbs racing that's like, you know, well, what do we do with this department or that department? And so that's very fortunate for us to be able to do it.

But yeah, I think that as we see right now, three is going to be a good sweet spot. Is the cost of the next gen car, what you expected, I know, so watching from the outside, all the owners had this estimated

cost of what it would be to run the car. And there was this sort of, that was, I guess, kind of what is shaping everybody's opinion about what the new deal needs to be or hope, whatever one as far as owners hope that the new deal is, to be able to afford what this car is going to cost.

It was supposed to be a much more straightforward number to race, this is what you're going to spend. Whereas for years with the old cars, you could race for $5 million if you want to run the back, but you could spend $20 million and run in the top 10 or run in the top five. Well, this car was going to cost. X for everybody. How is that all playing out? Not well because we have more consumables now than we

ever imagined. I mean, we're tearing up splitters every week and those are 5,000. You know, I looked at our damage report for our team and we're averaging about $50,000 a week in damage. That's just traditional wear and tear. That's wear and tear plus crashes. So take whatever number you just talked about and you got to add that to it plus you got to add labor that's not labor that's just parts and pieces and consumables that we are tearing up week in week out so i think that um yeah it's uh it's it's not my question is why are we so enamored what the what it costs us why not just we're all partners in this whatever the pie is we we divvy it up equally as shareholders in the sport. I just don't, I don't know why we're so enamored with what it costs the teams to do

X, Y, and Z. We are the highest form of motorsports in America. I hate to say it, but, you know, why are we trying to cut another 30, 40% out of our costs? Like, we keep cutting, like, we're already hardly going to the racetrack. You know, I think we should be there all weekend. Let's just, we'll run laps until we run out of gas and ain't no tires left. I don't care, but whatever it takes to keep building our sport and getting some of the time. excitement around the race on Sunday. But honestly, when we show up and just run 20 minutes, it's probably not that great for it. And so, but the problem is we can't afford it.

And so I just think that we have to stop cutting, because eventually if you keep cutting the grass, lower and lower and lower, you eventually get the dirt. Yeah. Well, isn't the reason they would, one of the reasons they would try to minimize costs for parity? Is that really? No, I'm asking. Isn't that sort of the message point from this whole new cars that it sort of even the playing

field and so it's supposed to make the competition better. You're minimizing cost, but also trying to make. In theory. Okay. In theory, yes. But again, until revenues exceed expenses, the playing field will never be level, ever. So you have to, that, they, those, those lines have to cross. So where a Rick Ware or BJ McCloud, they receive more in revenue than what it costs to

field a competitive team. But right now that's, that's not the case. so they'll continue to tread water to just try to keep up. Yeah. Basically, I think those teams are just sitting on that charter, waiting on the charter prices to continue to rise until it's like loud. If they do. That's right, if they do.

I think there's a big assumption there. Like, they're assuming, I mean, eventually that hits the ceiling, doesn't it? I mean, it's all going to hit the ceiling, I guess, but I think a lot of it just depends on, you know, where the model itself. goes. Now it's just the model again is just the dividing up of the pizza slices and how that gets divided. That's really

kind of what Dick takes I think because ultimately you want to have people from the outside of the sport wanting to come in here and own teams because they think that it's a game where you mean I can have a competitive

team. I will receive that in media rights money. I'll be able to field a competitive team and if I don't sell zero, if I should sell zero sponsorship, I won't lose money. Okay. I'm down for that. And so you want to have it to where they were going out and we're racing for profit or going out and we're getting sponsorship for profit, whatever it might be.

That's where I would love to see our sport go in the future. But it's, you know, everyone, there's a lot of mouths to feed. I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of people that have had a stake in this for a very long time. and I just want to see that the team owners, I think the healthier the team owners are, the better it is for our drivers, the better it is for our team guys, the better it is.

I mean, we're going to be spending money at the racetracks, hosting. I mean, there's just a lot of good things that come from healthy teams. What's the future at Joe Gibbs racing? How much longer are you going to race? I don't know. I don't know.

You haven't even thought about it. No, I've definitely thought about it. I've definitely thought about it. But I just, you know, I talked with my crew chief yesterday about this, and I says, to win my last start. You know, so I won't.

Hopefully it's meaningful. Hopefully it's a meaningful start. Yeah, but like, what are you going to do? You're going to win a race and go, is this one I'm supposed to quit? I don't know. You're going to know when you get out? I just, I'm done. I never, I just don't want to, I don't want the performance to decline to where I don't

think I can win every week. That's when I'm going to be like, how old are you? I'm 41. Yeah. And so I think. that the numbers would suggest you got about two years yeah whose numbers i just so when i was retiring i did some yeah yeah yeah the analytics yeah would tell you that uh yeah i guess the analytics say that 39 to 40 is is really a sweet spot it is and then it you lose a little then you lose a

little and then you lose a fair amount and then you lose a lot yeah so i mean listen father time is undefeated for certain. You're just reactions get a little slower and I don't know. I mean, what's it feel out there right now? I mean, you're running an infinity race or you're like, damn, these guys are crazy. Yeah, I get my ass kicked when I get in that car. Yeah, I mean, it, you know, watching, I've always kind of been curious of like, what is it that the driver's losing, right?

What is it that's causing? And there's, there's injury. There's, the car itself is not. not fast, you know, a guy will, a guy gets out of great equipment and gets in okay equipment and gets in equipment if they keep racing. Yeah, I can't. I won't be able to do it. You're not going to do that.

Yeah. But, you know, so, but I've always wondered, like, physically, what is it that drivers lose? You know, and I think a lot of it is they aren't willing to take the risks that are necessary. That, and they also stop doing the work in the week, you know, all the things. You got to do it every day. No doubt. I've said that many times.

I don't even consider myself a top 100 talent in our sport, but I've just worked really, really hard at my craft. And that's what's carried me. Between that and having one of the best teams in the garage every week, that's why I don't want to get in a worse car because it's going to expose me in a big way. So I just don't want, I'd rather just kind of keep things as they are. and when that's done, then I'll be done.

Yeah. So what happens with you got Ty coming up? Tye's, I mean, how talented is, Ty? You're close to it. You know, he signed with the agency that we're with, and, you know, he's been hanging around me and my team for quite a few weeks now. I think he's very, very good. Gosh, when I was 19, I think he's 19.

I mean, let's see. First of all, I know I was working a son. Subway at 19. I was not very good. I was maybe running grand stocks in 99. I was 19. And I was running 10th on the, you know, Southside Speedway. So like it was, I was not very good at all. And to see him winning, you know, Exfinity races on road courses in his first start at 19. It's like, good Lord. There's just the talent of the kids today are just better. I mean, I don't care what sport you want to bring up. They're all better because they have better. training, more information, better data.

It's just they're good. And they start earlier. So it's tough. It makes it tougher and tougher for older guys like me and you to compete. We have to work really hard to keep up with them. And I think that certainly his future is, he's going to be part of this sport for decades and decades. Do y'all know when he comes up to the cup series? We don't.

And I think there's just a lot of question marks at Gibbs about, you know, who's going to be where and what. And so I don't know. I don't know. I wish I knew because I could plan accordingly as well. So would you drive for yourself? I would. Yes.

You're looking for a 13. Yeah, but it costs money to put that car on the racetrack. And then on top of that, I need to make sure that I'm not taking a step down in equipment and performance, which that's what makes me very encouraged about. where my team's going right now. Like we, that 45 of Kansas was just stupid. By the way, the 23 was too.

Like, he was really, really fast. And so that's good sign for me that we're heading in the right direction over there. Yeah. So your cars get better. You see a couple more races like Kansas.

Sponsor walks in. You, you know, you've got two, five solid years left of, like where you're willing to put in the commitment the work behind the wheel that it's going to take to run well. Would you go dry for your own team?

Would that be more interesting to you? Not if FedEx extends. I think that I would like to retire at Gibbs with FedEx because it's just so unique to have a sponsor that has been part of the sport as long as they have and backed me as long as they have. Sure. I just, there's just no way I could leave them.

I mean, maybe at that point then I just run one or two races or something within, I wouldn't win my last race, probably. But I just, I would like to retire at Gibbs with FedEx. But if things change, then things change, and then you've got to reevaluate. Yeah. So I'm interested with Ty coming up. I think he's obviously at least a year or two out of driving a cup car. I wonder, so I know we're hearing, we're kind of hearing that Martin isn't sure whether

he wants to keep racing or not. He's going to really kind of determine whether he's having fun or not in this car. I don't know if he's decided that yet. I don't know if he is having fun right now, but I wonder who, I know that you and Kyle, and this is my own opinion, I know Kyle's got to get his deal done,

which you probably have, but I think that that's interesting as well. It's all interesting. Yeah. So I think you and Kyle are fine, but I wonder whether Christopher feels any pressure being in the position he's in. From Ty, right?

Does Christopher feel, he doesn't show it, watching him and listening to him in the media, but I wonder if he, maybe you guys already know kind of how this is going to play out, but I wonder if Christopher feels that pressure to go out there, kind of the same way I guess that Eric Jones did. When Christopher was coming up through the Xfinity series, it was like, hey, man, well, these guys got to, you know, got to move because Christopher's coming. Well, that's what they said to me in 2018 that Christopher was going to take my job.

And so, you know, since then I won like 16 races. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know that any pressure that he, that he's, he might feel. I just think that it'll be a very interesting three to four years that Jacob's Roicing to see how this all plays out. Really an interesting two to three years is probably the realistic number. But I don't know. I think, and I'm not, I hate to, I'm not going to speak form, but just in my opinion, I think JGR's got some heartburn over letting some guys go in the past that they gave up on too early. I'm not putting Christopher in that.

boat whatsoever because I think Christopher is very good. I remember racing with him my very first time at Charlotte. He was in a Xfinity Gibbs car and I was as well and I remember going up to Steve DeSouza or I think it was Joe at the time. I said, hey, he's good. You know, don't let him go. So I just think that it takes time, man. It's so hard. It's so hard to win in the Cup series. I can't emphasize that enough. There's so many good teams. There's, you know, a lot of cars that can win and you've got to have it all put together. And he's had speed. I mean, he's certainly had speed.

It's just he's got some challenges, you know, sometimes managing races, sometimes team lets them down or sometimes it's just, you know, accidents happen. But I think that you probably got to play the long game with Christopher, in my opinion. Yeah. And we've seen that with other drivers, too, even William. Like William, Byron is doing a great job this year. But, I mean, the first couple of years were. So someone asked me this year.

year this off season he says what about byron like is he i'm like oh he's going to scare the top four this year in the sense of like i think he'll go to the round of eight and i think he's he's going to be in the the conversation in the last few laps of wherever the last race before i guess it's martinsville's before phoenix i said he's going to be part of the conversation whether he's going to be in that top four or not so i just i knew and i i just as a competitor i saw it coming that he's He just needed a little bit more time. Yeah, he was super consistent last year, but I was like, man, he's got to find it soon because I think if he has another year of sort of mediocrity or being that eighth-place car every week,

people are going to start to pay attention and wonder who's going to replace him. So let's get your opinion on this past weekend at the All-Star Race. I think I already put it all out. You did. Did you get fined from what you said on MRN? I heard you did, but I wasn't sure. Oh, I did? Did you know?

I'm asking. He doesn't know. Maybe. Maybe. Are you expecting one? What was fightable? I said the F word. Oh, you did?

Yeah. I think you can do that today. Can you? Yeah. I'm not sure. We're going to find out. Yeah. I just say, we know, we just need to play by the Fing rules.

Yeah. You are emphatic about that, and I don't disagree with that one bit. Not because of Blaney. And I made it very clear that he deserved to win the race. But, you know. I've deserved to win the race too many times and I just do something bonehead and I don't win you know but it's

first of all there were two they tried to make a wrong right by doing another wrong and it's just that's just screwed up that's just screwed up and then they I don't know I just felt like they tried to lie to us and say that oh his one in the net was up and he was steering the car like horses I was right there you can see it's not up yeah it's not it

That's what I felt. I felt like they owned the mistake about throwing the yellow. Just do that. Then own that one. And instead now you kind of own one and then you completely try to cover up the second. Sort of excused the other one. And it's like, wait a second. Now there's a credibility factor here that we've now got to contend with.

Like there's a credibility. Like, wait, that's inconsistent. It would have been unfair for, it would have been unfair for Blaney to be pulled down. However, he did break the rule. He did. But if they were going to bend the rules, then just let them come in and fix it. At no reason should we ever be letting a driver out there with no winning net up. Especially, we're about to race for a win on a green-white checkered.

Yeah. Like the probability of us crashing was probably going to be pretty high considering what we were racing for an all-star win, right? And so he's the leader, and you know his win. You know his win-in-edat is not secured. My crew is gone for four weeks because we had a tire. rolling down pit lane. That's right. Because it's a safety issue.

I'm like, well, who are they suspending up in the tower? Because they need to be gone for four weeks as well. Oh, yeah. Has anybody at NASCAR text you or called you since your race? No. Yeah. Interesting. Because I would assume that somebody would be reaching out to you.

I mean, they can, but they know I'm going to go off. Based off of your past experiences with that and my own, I would have guessed that somebody had reached out to you and said, hey, I want to talk to you about this, and just even if it's a good conversation. But they're beyond that now. Yeah, I mean, they're not. I mean, we have those conversations about things,

but I think when I get fired up like that, I don't know. Do you have any regrets about getting fired up by that a little bit? About that? Yeah, no regrets. No regrets. No, because you cannot say safety's first when you deliberately let someone out there in an unsafe situation. I'll bring him in, let them put the damn thing up, and then give him a spot back.

If you want to bend rules, let's just go ahead and bend them all. They haven't reached out because they know he's right. He didn't say anything wrong. That's the thing. You can't call him up and say, let's talk about this. They know he's actually right. That's my opinion about it. Yeah, I mean, it's just, man, they put themselves in some tough spots.

I hate it for our series that we just are talking every 12 weeks about something that's just a blubes. that's just a blown call or not. It's just, we've got to get better. We just got to get better. So do you have an opinion about the All-Star event in itself? What would you do? Man, I don't know. Dale's going to give you endless money like he did before already.

He's just giving you money. Yeah. I think that we've just got so, we've diluted our sports so much that it's just hard to consider anything special anymore. That's right. Well, so the clash, okay, was that a, does that upgrade? Yes. Right.

So there's an example of, hey, man, we took something that was absolutely going down the same path, and we changed it, made it something worth doing. So, you know, I think that I had a little conversation with you a little bit, but also going through Twitter and thinking about it myself, knowing that the Daytona 500 pays about $2 million to win. Just FYI, for the race teams, that race pays less than a normal weekly race. Yeah. Just when you think about the purse, yes, it's not a...

The fans want to know. Blaney wins a million bucks. Blaney gets a million dollar giant fake check in Victor Lane. How much money do you think Blaney took home? Ooh. I don't... I'm going to estimate... half of it.

Half of it. Where does the rest of it get? It gets split up. Team guys. Car owner. How much did the car owner get you think? I know every deal is different. Man, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know. Pass first. I don't know the answer. I can tell you this. The clash, both cars took home combined 90 grand. I know that we did 65,000 in damage.

The drivers took home most of the winnings. We were negative like you wouldn't believe. You started the year off. And it was bad. I mean, and we went to the West Coast and the time. And it was just labor. It was tough. The All-Star is not that much different, by the way.

It's, you know, when you look at when Bob posts every week, here's the cup purse, the All-Stars less. So let's, it's not as big as what, you know. What it used to be. No. I mean, today it's 2.7 million. million back when they started this is 2.7 today. So the TV money's gone up. Where's it going?

Someone's got it. So the purse notwithstanding then, you know, is the race fixable in terms of just? Yeah, it's fixable. I just don't know what, but I don't know if you've got to put it on a short track or something. So if I take... You don't have to have three quarters of the field out there.

Like we just got, we've diluted. did everything, the playoffs, the, we just keep adding cars and... It used to be the last, the winners in the last 12 months and like, or the last 15 winners or something like that. And when somebody knew one, they booted the most, you know, the oldest winner off of the list. And which made it feel like something you needed to get, become part of, right? You pushed every week to try to get, to be on that list. And that was the same way with the clash to an extent. when you want a poll you're like hell yeah i'm in the clash you know not only that but in in the all

star race now like you think any legit really kind of pretty good team is worried about making in the all-star race hell no you can take like four or five guys out of open now so it's like you know everybody's in it i mean it used to be i remember in my second or third year winning a race i'm like i'm in the all-star race now because we won it was right before the coke 600 and i'm like hell yeah that was a real emotion and you don't have that emotion anymore. No. Is it because of the purse or is it because of the identity of the race? Because it's a foregone conclusion that you're in the

All-Star race. It's not a prestigious anymore. It doesn't mean anything to make a race. It's not invitation and it's not a membership when everybody's included. You know how inflation's going on right now? It's because there's too much money out there. They just print it more and more and more and more money. Like that's what, you know, hey, we're going to give more and more spots

into the thing. So it's just not special anymore. It doesn't have as much value. It's not special. You know, I always looked at the all-star race is sort of like the crazy drunk uncle at the family reunion that you just can't take your eyes off of like it's you know it's sort of a dumpster fire but you it's entertaining so let's for the next two hours let's watch it right because everybody else is sober but now there's a bunch of drunk in fact the whole family reunion's drunk right because you got stages you got playoff points you got all these you know all these fireworks and everything every

race feels like what the all-star race was intended to be and so nothing is special about it like I mean, when someone tunes in, they don't know whether they're watching a Texas playoff race or a Texas All-Star race. It doesn't, it all looks the same on TV for sure. Would you have done anything different if you were racing for three or four million dollars instead of one on that green white checker? No, nothing else I could have done. You did everything you could do. Yeah. So the purse doesn't matter as much?

No, it's the prestige of it. I mean, honestly, again, I couldn't even answer. you what what did our team make finished in second or third like i don't know who we don't you know um i wouldn't even know what my percentage would be of the if i won the million like i just i you know i know a roundabout but it's not about that for us is the prestige of winning the race and and to me what i look at is the trophy every week when they have it during that 1948 they put the trophy out there i'm like damn that's a bad at the all-star trophy was pretty badass so i was like that was a good yeah i want that yeah so when you're at your house

How many trophies are in your house? Pretty much. All of them? Pretty much all of them, but they're spread out. Most of them are down in the basement, though. I only have a couple in my office upstairs, but other than that, there's nothing on the main level. Is the Dayton 5, which Dayton 500 winning cars in there?

The 16 and 20. Joe has 19. Yeah, Joe has 19, but I have the rights to that one day. You made a deal? Yeah, I just, you know, certainly they're important cars to me, but the 2019 Daytona was special to him for JD's reasons, and actually he's putting a whole big, you know, they're redoing all their lobby at Joe Gibbs Racing,

and that car is like the center of it. They're doing a whole, it looks like Victory Lane in that car is in it because it's such a special car for him. So you walk in your living room and you can see your race cars? That's my man cave room. Man Cave room. Yeah. You got room for just two?

Three. And there's a whole. I've got the 16 Daytona car, the 20 Daytona car, and then I have my mini stock. Many stock. Yeah. Do you have anything else from your past? I have the late model that has probably got me my job, that I won 25. The Bailey's car?

The 25, the black 99. Yeah. Where is it? In a warehouse. Why? I don't know. I got no word put it. How much more house is?

as he got that build before he did. I mean, I just don't. Is it, would it crank? Is it in good shape? I ran it actually at the Thanksgiving at Southern National and probably, I don't know, 2010 or so, I ran that race. You raced it? Yeah. It's like, by that point, how old was it?

A couple years. Oh, it had to be eight, ten years old? I know. It was fast, though. Still fast. Still good. So do you still have the basketball? I do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's on the download, though. It used to be all over social media. I don't see it anymore. Yeah. I think we quieted it down because during COVID we just would have some. We're supposed to be together.

Yeah. I'm sure they were wearing a mask out there. We had a very small group that I'm like, I'm comfortable around these 10 guys. Yeah. Just as long as you don't go anywhere when you go home, you know. Michael Waltrip looks safe. Let's just hang out with him. Tell us about the golf guys tour.

So that's fun. It's a golf league that I started, oh gosh, it had to be in 2015 or 16. And it all started with, we would have a group text of NASCAR drivers, media members, pit crew guys, all kinds of different people in our industry. And we would all, after practice on Saturdays, we'd be done at noon or something like that. We'd look for the local golf course. You know, where's somewhere within 30, 40 minutes that we could drive to a nice golf course. And we named the chat the golf guys.

And so I'm like, you know, we keep arguing about like who's the best and whatever. Like I got to create some sort of league that creates a point system and we have events. And like we really crown a champion at the end. So yeah, there's 24 of us now in it. We actually Blaney subbed in in the last event did really, really well. But we just, we have eight events, and it's almost like the FedEx Cup playoffs in golf, where we have points designated to each event. And then with about two to three events to go, the points start ramping up more and more valuable.

And so, yeah, I think, you know, Larson's won the championship. Ricky's won it. I've won it. And then a few other guys. Does it pay more than the All-Star race? The championship? Not to win, but probably for what I made for second. I got you.

Oh, man. What is the, other than just having fun, I mean, that thing is growing. Like your golf guys thing gets its own sponsor. Y'all are going to all these incredible golf courses, because I hear all this from Lutthart. So not only that, I'm sure he tells you about all the bets. Yeah, the bets, yeah. Of course. Oh, y'all do like.

So I am the line maker, the bookie, the whole thing. I mean, I spend hours creating. I have spreadsheets on every person's performance, how they finished at that tournament last year at that course, where their average last four finishes have been, and I create lines that, okay, for Steve LaTart versus Ricky Stenhouse, I set a line. And, you know, maybe Ricky's favor, maybe LaTart's favor.

Then I have for each player, here's their average finish. Will they finish higher or lower than 11th? You know, and then I have, you know, they can bet on themselves to finish in the top five. Like, there's a hundred and, there's got to be over 160 or 70 bets that I do that I make up for each event.

It's crazy. There's a lot of action in there. Why are you doing this? I love it. He's a degenerate. I love it. Where do you have time to do all that? Ah, sure.

After the kids go to bed. Yeah. I go in my, office and I'm like give me give me some time I put my spreadsheets out and I just start kind of you know I've got a template and I just kind of switch a few matchups up here and there I got to change the odds you know you can bet on odds to win between these 24 guys everything you could bet in that for the PGA tournament you can bet against these amateur golfers and but trust me it's very difficult to figure out which one of these hacks are going to perform well on any given day

Does it ever get, has it ever got contentious? Because listen, I listen, between your basketball league and golf league, when you run a competitive environment, as we even know, when we were running a little basketball league to half court league, sometimes you get some people get a little overly competitive and they start going at each other. Does that happen? Not on the golf course because golf is a game of integrity, as they say. So not there, but basketball. Yeah, we had, last night, there was a little face-to-face with a couple guys. With you? No, not me.

Oh, you didn't get it. I have a nagging calf issue, and I couldn't play last night. Is it a nagging calf? I mean, you've had about seven ACLs, haven't you? I know. I've knocked all four fenders off. I've had both knees, my right shoulder. No, my left shoulder I got fixed two off-seasonings ago,

and then this off-season I got to fix my right shoulder, so I've done knocked them all off. Damn. Nothing left. You're not falling apart, are you? Is this way? My body is taking a beating, a beating. in the 41 years.

I tell you, though, if it means that he becomes more opinionated, this is the best version of Denny Hamlin that I can ever imagine. I mean, like, this is it. I just, I think we just need to get him on here to give us, I don't know, what's your opinion about the Supreme Court this day, you know, today. Hey, there's some social issues we should get Denny to weigh in on. You'll know when you're, we don't, you'll know when it's time to retire because you run out of you kind of, you kind of, like when you're, when you're at zero f***s, that's like,

I must be in my last year. There's something to that. You know what you need. You need a podcast. Yeah, I know a media company is pretty good. Do we need to negotiate a deal right now? Well, we can work on it for sure. I'm telling you, we would crash the internet, Denny.

Yeah, but I would have to make sure that I don't have anyone that I answer to. That's the only issue, right? Your rules. Your rules. I mean, we know in the sport that, like, you know, you say something that's, somewhat and there's people that are like, oh, you can't say that because of this, that, and the other.

Like, you could just do, you could do your podcast about gambling. We can do a gambling podcast. We don't have one of those yet. To be honest but hey, I don't get to gamble in my deal. I'm the one that, I'm the guy that makes the lines. I found out a long time ago when you go to, go to Vegas, like you want to be on the other side of the table.

The one deal in the cards, you don't want to be the one, you know, placing your bet. I already think Denny is sort of like the horse whisper to our other podcast. I think, you know, when Brett and Freddie come out with all these hard takes... Oh, boy, you put me with those guys. Yeah, I think that they're getting information and I think that he's going behind the scenes. You went on there, didn't? No.

Not yet? No, my God. It's so much fun. They talk so much... That's what I'm saying. But they keep it real, though. Like, that's what I appreciate about that podcast is that they know they got people to answer to. And, I mean, listen, you don't think that Freddy's been talked to a few times about, hey, you know, this is.

that and the other, you know, but I'm the opinion like, we got to have someone keeping it real in our sport and it can't be all political all the time. No, no, it's not political. That's you, though. You understand that. You're going to be that guy. You have to be. Who else do we got?

You're the one with all the influence. You're the driver. Listen, at the end of the day, nobody cares what spotters think. Yeah. Right? But, Danny, this is why I ask you the question about, does NASCAR respect you? Because you're the guy now. Like, you're the junior Johnson.

because you're on the team. You've got to be treated that way. And if when your opinion, when you have opinions and you do, I'm just curious on people are giving you the type of respect and credibility that it should be coming with your position at this point. They do. I can say that they do. But I'm also not immune to know that like I know I'm not right all the time also. So I have looked back in my career and I remember saying stuff mostly as a driver only and having an opinion about something.

Now as an owner, I'm like, I see the other side's point of view a little bit better now. So again, I don't expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon and pile on to whatever my opinion might be on whatever subject. But it's all for, I just want it to be for the greater good. I want this sport to be good and healthy because ultimately, you know, listen, do you think I want to blow everything I just made over the last 20 years as a race car driver? I want to, I'm reinvesting in the sport. I need to make sure they're reinvesting back in me. I think isn't that the biggest misconception when people sit there and call you or call me about door bumper clear? They're like, they just want to be negative. And I'm like, wait a second, you're completely confusing the situation. They start from a point of passion for the sport and they end at a point of passion for the sport.

And all of that stuff fuels their opinions. And I think this is true to you is why I'm bringing it up. Is that, you know, you want what's best for the sport, which is why that you can say, hey, I have a a problem with this. This isn't done right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm not, but let's have a conversation about it without being accused of being negative and, you know, because that's not, that's not where you're coming from. You want what's best for the sport. You've invested too much for it. 100%. I mean, that's, that's why I, you know, I got into the sport is because I wanted to give back to it well beyond my driving days. It's, I always knew that I wanted to run a business when I was done racing. I didn't know. I thought I was going to open up another.

trailer shop, honestly, because I loved my job at the trailer shop. And I knew something about the business. And I was like, you know, and then it just during that pandemic and I sat around on my couch for eight weeks, I was like, you know, I played golf a little bit, but I'm like, damn, I can't golf every day. Like, what am I going to do? Because that was the first time we've ever had, you know, eight weeks off in the middle of nice weather. And I'm just like, you know, usually it's, you know, December, January when we're off as race car drivers. So I knew at that point. And I knew at that point, and I had to figure out what I was going to do beyond race car driving. And so the opportunity just kind of landed right there.

And I started talking to Toyota. I started talking to Joe Gibbs Racing about, can I make this happen? And we made it happen. There was one thing I was curious about, and this is kind of into details a little bit, but there's 36 charters and there's 40 starting spots at the racetrack. And so most of the race weekends, there's 36 cars. there's going to be 37 cars for the 600, somebody else is showing up.

I mean, that seems like there's a, I feel like that something needs to happen to get to where we're, it's either look, we're going to have 36 cars and that's it. It's a 36 car field, nobody else. There's 40 spots, but those four guys don't show up every week. What's the problem? Well, because the guaranteed charter money is for those 36. Right.

The four open spots, they actually took more money from the open spots from 37 to 40. They took more money this year away from those guys that just show up and shifted it toward them. And shifted it more towards the charter money to get these teams more of a guaranteed base. And now they don't come. Right. And there's spots for an open car to compete. You don't even have to go. They're available.

And they could go win the race and not make money. Right. By the way. Maybe they took too much away? Yeah, maybe. But they're not even coming. But I mean, it's. I definitely don't want them.

continuing to, you know, say this. Why don't we just open? We just can't spread. I mean, why, let me ask you this, why isn't F1 owners overjoyed with Andretti coming in? Because they get diluted. Yeah. You know, they're having to take that one billion in revenue that they get from, from F1. And right now they're splitting it up amongst 10 teams, 100 million each. You add more teams, two more cars. Okay, now that, that, the revenue is the stream is the same. Now you've, distributed amongst 12. And so these other guys are like, hell no,

we're going to sign it off to giving away that. Now, I think there's some fees that they pay to kind of make up for that. I think that, in my opinion, if we can get the TV deal in a better place, that we should open up more charter positions where they are open for someone like yourself or for us to expand or whatever it might be. That's a great question. So you would say expand to 40 charters.

38 charts, whatever, right? How does you paid an unknown sum for your charters, right? Yep. So Junior Motorsports is going to come in. There's new charters there available. Charter 37, charter 38, whatever. What is fair for you, for an owner like me, to come in and pick up one of these charters? Hmm.

Right? Because I've not, you know, are you going to expect me to pay the, the funds that you paid to get to acquire yours or the new value of the charters at that moment. So you would have to pay. It'd be unfair for you. Yeah, you would have to pay in my mind whatever the value. Yeah, the value. But then whatever you dilute the pie, you'd have to pay that difference as well.

So when you come in, you take purse money away from the 36, there's a number there that has to, that is a now. a lump sum that you have to pay to make everyone so they're not diluted. It's just a new shareholder coming in, right? Interesting. I'd be curious about that because I was watching the car counts and I'm thinking something's going to happen. They're either going to say we're going to cap it at 36 and the charters are franchises and they own a franchise, you've got to come in here and buy one.

Otherwise, you're not racing. Or they're going to open up more charters or find the third option, which is probably the least likely is that make it more viable for an open team to race and make money without start park. But if more charters are opened up, the teams that have paid millions of dollars to acquire them need to find this, you know, need to approve of the process of buying a new charter, right? That's correct.

Yeah, buying a blank charter. But this is all we're talking about what needs to be fixed. We have a legend of our sport wanting to come in. He has the facilities. He's ready to go. He's able to do it, but it financially does not make sense to you. And so that's a problem. That is a problem we have to fix.

Yeah. Yeah. We really haven't talked about Cup in junior motorsports. Yeah, I mean, we have talked to every single person that is in the industry about this, about like what is the options, what routes are there to take. You know, that initial purchase of the charters isn't the scary part. They are worth what they are, right? You're buying something that you hope is going to continue to gain value.

That's great, right? I'll invest that money if it's going to be worth more tomorrow. But it's not knowing the cost of racing and how much that's going to be, not knowing exactly how much sponsorship you're going to have to acquire to offset that cost, and not knowing what the new agreement is going to be. I'm with Denny in the feeling that the owners deserve a bigger piece of the pie. That's the only way it's going to entice people like, me to get involved is knowing that, well, I've got a guarantee that there's this money on the table

to go race. I can compete. If I find more money, I can compete even harder. But I know with this money, I can at least be there and try to race competitively and smart every week. We're doing that. My partner has a great slogan. All well-managed teams deserve to race for a championship and make a reasonable profit. Yeah. That's it. It all ends there. All well-managed teams deserve to race for a championship and make a reasonable profit. That's it. It stops there. That's right.

I think we do a damn good job of that where we're at. It's a different model smaller, but the same process, and we make it work. I think we could get there in the cups level if we get that opportunity. But like I got. And you know the trickle down effect to that is the healthy owners is that you have more Denny Hamlins, more Josh Berries, more of these guys that, you know, we're looking at short track ranks to like find who is going to be that guy that is going to take us to the promise land right i mean you know there's just so many talented drivers that just don't have the

funding to be able to get themselves a ride because the teams have to the teams have to stay in business and they have to stay in business by balance balancing a sheet a P and L and so you know that's an unfortunate place to be in because sometimes the the best talent sits on the sidelines because the teams can't go out of business. And unfortunately, they have to do whatever it takes to stay in business. Yeah. Hey, I get a hundred different things that I just love to ask your opinion on. And one just came up, if you don't mind.

There are people that will make this argument that current day NASCAR drivers, cup level drivers, have too much entitlement to really kind of to go back and understand the big picture. in terms of like, you know, if you go to an IndyCar race, and an IndyCar race, you know, it's a different environment. One might say more welcoming to a race fan. One may say this or that the other. Like there's more access? Maybe access or just in, maybe IndyCar is not even the best scenario.

But like, what do you think about that? Like, are, I'm curious of your opinion on the mindset of current day cup drivers. And I'm also curious if you think that we are lacking star power. right now and if that's a a problem in our sport. A thousand percent. One thousand percent. I mean, I think if you asked the most casual race fans, most people would know Michael Waltrip's name over William Byron's name.

Right. That's a problem in our sport. So I think that just that's, it's just, that's a problem. I mean, do you think that we give sometimes? are fans too much, too much access. I mean, F1, you ain't, I mean, there's, you want to go in the paddock there. It's big money and you don't, it's not, you know,

open autograph sessions and all that. I'm saying that's good and it's also bad in many ways and whatnot. But again, I think that there was probably three or five thousand people in the infield, Texas of the infield there. The access is just, you've got so much action. eventually it doesn't become prestigious or exciting anymore because hell I'll just go to the garage next week you know or the week when they come back like it's not it's it used to be something like man you got a garage pass for a NASCAR race like it was a it was a big deal and now it's just

I think you get one with your ticket whose problem is it though whose responsibility is it for the lack of star power is it on the drivers is it on NASCAR who's responsible I don't know to replenish the star power. I'm not sure. Because see, I've heard multiple options. Well, first, I think that the sport had a bigger presence on maybe like ESPNs or whatnot. Like, it just seems like this is just from an outside perspective. I just feel like some sports don't take us seriously.

And sometimes that, you know, that can fall in a lot of different people's hands. I get very frustrated when our broadcast partners kind of joke on us sometimes. It's very frustrating to me that we've got to take ourselves a little bit more seriously. If you want to, my parents always say, you want to eat with the adults, you got to act like one, right? And so I just think that we have to sometimes change, you know, the way that we market ourselves and take ourselves a little more seriously. I think that's what creates a little star power. I agree with that 100%. I always get annoyed when our broadcast is hokey or clowny,

especially when it brings the drivers into that because our drivers are supposed to be gladiators. That's right. They're warriors. And having them, a lot of the silly things that they end up trying to get them to do. One thing I never really understood, though, and it's different because back in the day, I see your picture of your dad.

here like you would see pictures of him he'd be on the farm you know throwing hay and whatnot and people related to that and they loved them however like i think about the stars when i go to an NBA game or something like they are superstars because they can do things that i don't do i can't relate to them because they have a talent that i can never but they're still stars but they're they're stars right and so i think that there's two ways to do it it's either the relatable guy or there's guys that hey, they do live a lavish lifestyle and they've got great things and they're on Saturday Night Live or whatever it is.

They do things that you are not able to do. That's what makes them a superstar. And so I think there's a balance there that certainly I think that and then right now in our sport I would say 80% of the guys are just no one even knows who they are. There's not enough stories being told about who they are. So that's a great. I think there's room for both guys.

There's room for that relatable guy next door and then there's a room for that New York. city guy that's that's got the penthouse. So, you know, like Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt was a great. Yep. The one thing that I think is missing in, and you became much more popular, you're a good example of this, when FedEx did some really, really great marketing. Yes.

You know, I would walk through the garage and be near you and listen to fans, talk about your commercials, right? They were funny and they were played on mainstream. They weren't just race day commercials. They were played on networks in the middle of sitcoms and all that stuff. And that made you a household name. I think that is what's lacking. Yes.

Our guys are only, you're only seeing these guys on race day out on the racetrack. We don't see them in marketing commercials outside, especially outside of a broadcast, race broadcast. And so like a Byron should be promoted by his, his, his partners and his race team and so forth beyond the scope of, you know, racing journalists and broadcast TV. How do you do that when his main sponsor's Liberty, though? Or the fact that you've broken up the sponsors across the board. It's going to have to be a Chevrolet thing. I mean, I agree, but yeah, y'all have y'all's Toyota commercials where you and Denny and there's new ones coming out that are funny as hell. And people, listen, you know how many people say I love your PJs?

Yes. I mean, that Domino's commercial. I mean, by the way, they spent 70 million. on that one commercial, that Domino's commercial, they played it over 42,000 times on every network you could imagine. I'm talking about National Geographic, that thing was playing. Like it was on so many different networks, but it was, that took a big amount of money, and it got, you know, people say it all the time. And so I agree with you. Back in the day, we used to have tons of FedEx commercials and all that.

It was part of the activation, which people don't understand is that it, you know, we're asking these sponsors to. to be on a race car that goes around 200 miles an hour and we want their logo to be seen. No, it's more about the branding. They got to activate. I mean, one thing that my partner Curtis said, and Curtis is Michael's business manager's been with him for 30 years. Like the access that you have, the experience is unmatched. We don't take advantage of that in other sports that we have.

This is why sponsors would come here is because you can go take a picture with a driver right before he gets in. you can't go into the locker room of an NBA game, you know, 30 minutes before and, you know, and meet the player. Like, you might be able to get a handshake afterwards if you're lucky, which you're usually not. And so he's like, the access here is what sets this sport apart. We just have to take advantage of it a little bit better. So, yeah, it's our sport's got a lot of positives to it that really can be built on. We just have to be willing to make a few changes here and there.

Yeah. Well, we can sit here and talk all day long. It's pretty great to be able to sit down and get your perspective, and especially after everything that's happened to you over the last several years and the growth that you have personally and professionally, you're going to be around a long time, and it'll be fun to see all that process, you know, play itself out. Yeah.

Win his last race. He's going to win his last race. That's my plan. I want to win the last race. I just hope it's meaningful. I want it to be the – In 2037, he's winning his last race. You're not asking much, are you?

It feels like you're fucking out of your mind. I'm going to win my last race and it's going to be the biggest race of my career. I know it. Hey, you never know. I mean, hey, if it's this year, then I might think about it.

Well, we appreciate it, man. Thank you for coming out here. I know you got a lot of things going on. You got some lines to make and a lot of homework to do for your golf buddies. But I appreciate you a lot, man, for coming out here and sharing your opinions. Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it. Denny Hamlin 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 of a true ally. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the show and the entire Dirty Mo Media team. All right. Well, we are live on YouTube. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. And appreciate everybody for tuning in to Ask Junior, presented by Xfinity.

And you've sent all your questions into Xfinity Racing on Twitter. And I look forward to answering some questions here on the Ask Junior segment. Let's go, Hannah. We've got a ton of people already joining us on. on the chat, but this one was one that was pulled from Twitter on hashtag Ask Jr. from Higgy. It says, this is kind of previewing Coke 600, but it says with all of the NASCAR Salutes initiatives happening this month, they got me wondering, what's the most memorable or impactful sponsor appearance or special events that you have done during your career?

Oh, man. That's a great question. I mean, it is a good question because, and Mike was probably there for half of that. I think some of the more fun appearances or things you get yourself into were with, we just did one with Unilever, but we worked with military over the years in the Navy and National Guard and going on aircraft carriers or, you know, drove a tank one time. So, I mean, getting to do stuff like that with the military. is so fun going out to a firing range and seeing how all that works and shooting a lot of different

guns and stuff like that. I mean, some of that stuff is, you know, you're with experts and they're showing you how the tank works and how to drive it and move it around and never thought my whole, you know, never thought I'd ever get a chance to drive something like that or, and to go down in an aircraft carrier and see how all that works and how they function, you know, and live aboard a ship like that is just insane. Going out on the flight deck and trying to imagine. We actually landed.

Well, if you remember, we landed. The feeling of landing on an aircraft carrier and getting launched off of an aircraft carrier is nothing that can be replicated anywhere else, right? Right. But do you remember when we landed the first time, we missed the rope? and we had to pull back up. I don't remember that. I do.

I've even got it on video. Nope. I've even got it on video. Now, the word on the street was they did that on purpose. Of course. But that doesn't make you feel any better. You're messing with my life here. But we came down, you know, and it's like there's no windows.

We're in a cargo plane. Remember that? It's not like it's, you know, you get to see. So you just kind of feel the plane kind of maneuvering and getting a position. And it's like, wham. and it starts pulling back up and it's like did we really just freaking miss we missed the cable and then we landed the second time and uh by that time it was a hot mess because uh but i would say that was an amazing one that's the first thing that came to mind but you've also flown with

the blue angels which you know that i mean like how you're going to go that's got to be up there you pass out because i feel like everyone pass it uh yeah so yeah in the video there's on it's on YouTube where I blacked out for a couple of seconds, but he, so one of the interesting things about that is, um, so we're flying around forever. Like this is a long, it's like a 30 minute flight, it felt like. And, uh, he turned, we, we're, you know, we did a, we, we did a big bank at 10,000 feet or 7,000 feet. And same Gs as, and we replicated that bank at, you know, 500 feet. And, you know, 500 feet the same G's right and he was showing me this he's like look man you're gonna this one up here at 7,000 feet we're gonna do about six and a half Gs or five Gs or whatever and right around there is

when you start to pass out or some people start to pass out and so we go into this bank and we're kind of going and going and going and there's these exercises you do to try to keep blood from going down in your legs you got to try to keep the blood up in your body and in your brain and I don't know how that works but and I don't know if I was doing it right but we're up there at seven thousand feet doing this turn and I was fine and we get out of the turn he's like you know you didn't get close to passing out no I didn't I didn't get close past now he's like okay we're going to do the same thing down at 500 feet and I passed out and so doing you know the the altitude it's more dangerous or more more likely to black out at that lower altitude which is wild

because, you know, the pilots have to understand that, right? When they're flying around and doing things, and I guess it comes second nature to them because they do it so much, but you've got to be so aware of all those little nuances about flying a plane like that, that during that turn, you know, 180-degree turn at 5 or 7-Gs at 500-foot, will knock you out, whereas up at 7,000 you're way much better off. And he turned it upside down. We're going across the ground flying super fast.

It seemed like a couple hundred feet. He turned it upside down and we went up and over a peak, a mountain peak. Oh, we, I mean, when we, I'm looking out, the mountain goes right by the, it was like I could reach out and touch it. It was so crazy. And anyways, man, it was fun. I got to go to boxing matches with Budweiser. Those were amazing because I was a big, I'm still a boxing fan.

I'm kind of looking for a fighter to pull forward these days, but all the guys that I pulled forward long retired. But it was great to go to a boxing match and experience, you know, all that. The excitement of being in an arena like that in a fight actually happened in front of you. It's pretty cool to see it in person. A lot of different energy than in your living room. Yeah. You're talking about like the Gs and being upside down?

It literally gave me goosebumps, maybe queasy thinking about being upside down. Yeah. So we covered a lot of this in the beginning of this show. So the listeners will definitely have to tune in to listen to stuff about the All-Star Race. But Pat Clark asked this in the chat. And I think it's actually a good question to kind of further that. Putting yourself in Ryan Blaney's shoes after that caution flies, thinking you won the race, how hard is it to refocus knowing that, you know, you'd already let your guard down,

you wanted to celebrate, how far does it to re-rack all of that focus to try and do a one-lap shoot out in that scenario? Well, I talked to Ryan, and he just said that he, the anxiety and nerves were through the roof. You got the initial shock. You know, you got this elation first that, man, I just won this race, a million bucks, all-star race. And, you know, here's a guy who has been waiting for this moment,

this big win. He's all year long kind of been trying to find his way to Victory Lane. He's won one of the biggest races a year. And instantly, seconds later, you get that taken away from you. Like, you finally got this thing, you know, this thing in your hand that you've been wanting, and now somebody walks up and goes,

not yours. You don't, you didn't win the award. You have to pull yourself back together. You got to regroup, and then you start, you know, you're trying to put this window net up, so he can't really start to think about a green-white checkered and, you know, getting up on the wheel and motivating himself for these final few laps and how is,

where am I going to perform this restart? to be able to give myself an advantage. What can I do to put, you know, take the advantage away from the guys around me? He can't even start thinking about those things or formulating a plan for this green white checker because he's got to get this winning end up to be able to compete. He's got to get this winning end in a position to where he can have a shot to try to win the race. I mean, he's freaking out. So unfair.

What an unfair thing to put somebody through in a moment like that. Matt, and then, you know, he finally prevails. You know, you see him in Victor Lane. He looks normal. I was surprised that he physically looked like he was fine. But I don't know, I would have, I don't know where I would have went with the post-race interview had I been. There'd have been a fine involved. Had they been, when they came to me and go, hey, man, what's your thoughts?

He just won the All-Star race. I'd be like, what the hell? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was pretty composed. And those are not easy to get up, too. He said, I think I heard it in the radio interview. He was like, I used all of my energy.

My arm was cramping up, getting ready to come to the green. Because he was trying to lift that window net up, and they're definitely not easy to get up. You just kind of talked about wrestling or boxing, and that kind of alludes to a question that Brian Clay submitted, said last week wrestling was mentioned. Were you a wrestling fan? And if so, who was your favorite wrestler?

It can be NWA, WCW or WVE. Yeah, we talked about. We talked about this before, but when I was a big NWA fan back when, you know, it was on Saturday morning during, you had cartoons and wrestling. And every Saturday, couldn't wait. Trisa didn't allow us to watch. I had a, so we'd have to sneak it in somehow. But, and there were days when she was hovering too close. We just didn't get to see it.

She didn't want you to watch wrestling? Well, she said it made me too, maybe too wild. So I had this, you remember the, do you remember the, they were kind of like, there weren't pillows,

but they were like a lazy, the top of a lazy boy, like the back and the arms that you'd sit on the floor and you'd sit in. A hammock, Ottoman. Is that what it?

Yeah, like a little Hasick they would call them. Big puff of you. Yeah. So I, I'm 7, 10, right? Probably four, foot tall. I had one of those, and that was my wrestling partner. And so when the wrestling would come on, I took this thing, and we would wrestle in the floor of my sister's bedroom. We had a little

13-inch color TV in her room, and we watched cartoons and wrestling Saturday mornings, and I wrestled in the floor, suplexing this little pillow all over the place. And that was what was causing Teresa some anxiety, and she would ban the wrestling from television in the house. And so, uh, that's why I made the rice cake joke is because we had no sugar in our house either. And so we had rice cakes, which I, plain, and I wasn't creative enough as a young kid to think out of the box and put stuff on it. But so we had rice cakes to eat. We had the Popeye's cereal, those little puffs that didn't have any sugar. But we had lots of new, what is.

We had lots of what's in the blue packet, not the sweet and low, but the other one. Equal. Oh, equal. Yeah. Oh, man. That ain't sugar. A bunch of equal would make anything taste all right. Maybe.

I know. I couldn't, I don't know what the... What an awful life. My childhood was interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't trade for that. I mean, my God, the Ottoman thing, that's pretty pitiful, too. I mean, like, that's your best friend. That's cool.

I was so disappointed. No, cool, but, like, you didn't have any other options. I was so disappointed, man, because I enjoyed playing the wrestling, you know, playing out the match in the floor. Who was your favorite, though? Oh, okay. So. The Ottoman. Did you have a name for the Ottoman?

Dusty Rhodes. We, me, I did have friends that lived down the street and we made belts, you know, who didn't make paper belts, right? And we would, I would go up to their house and we would wrestle and have our matches. And we had our, we had our championship belt and then the Mid-Glanic title and all that. And so I liked Dusty Rhodes, Magnum TA, and then Magnum TIA got that car crash, and that sucked. And so, you know, it was just dusty at that point. And I guess Wahoo McDaniel a little bit, he was a little before my time.

But I don't know. I mean, beyond, you know, I kind of went away from it after Dusty Roads left, or the NDA kind of went away. I kind of stopped watching it. then I saw Stone Cold wrestle one time. Hanging out with Tony Jr. and Tony Senior, we was watching wrestling, and I was like hooked again. So I watched it for a long time while Stone Cold was a big deal and the rock. And then I kind of have went away. I've went away from it.

I don't really watch wrestling now because there's really nobody that's compelling to me that I connect to. But it'll happen. Somebody will come along. And a change of pace with this one here. This one comes from Ted Farmer when it says, if it was 2 a.m. after a night of drinking, what would be your go-to order at Waffle House, and what are you playing on the jukebox? Oh, I know about it. My go-to order?

Grainslam? No, the chicken melt is my favorite. Yeah. So it's so good. It's grilled chicken with cheese, and I get my hash browns covered in pickles. Wait, what? Covered in pickles?

He ain't lined. He does. covered in pictures. That's not an option. I know. You've got to create it. No way. You say, look, man, just put as many pickles as you can stand and put on it. Back in about 2008, 7, 6, something like that, I had Waffle. He wanted Waffle House so much in that order. He just said that I had Waffle House programmed into my phone. Called them the usual. Like if we were picking up Waffle House.

I mean, like, I may steal, as a matter of fact, from that. I mean, like, there was a phase. you go through these phases where we were hitting some Waffle House all the time. So good. And he never did deviate from that order. That was his order. What's your order?

Oh, I'll just mix it. I don't have a go-to. I just do it whatever. I'm in the moment, you know, whatever I'm feeling. But not him. He liked the pickles thing I always remember. Getting the pickles on the hashblers. They're the hamburger sliced, you know.

Like the thin pickles, yeah. I'll try it. I'll have to be drunk to try it, but I'll try it. It's good. Oof. Scattered, smother, covered, chunked, and diced. Yeah, see, I just, I don't, I want them plain, but covered in pickles. I just can't get over the pickle thing.

I'm just not a pickle person. Sorry. It's all right. That is it for Asc Jr. A lot of people, though, are in the chat that are going to be at the 500 this weekend. And a lot of them saying, yeah, and a lot of them saying, if you're free on Friday night, I don't know if you've been there before, the little 500 at Anderson is one of the coolest spectacles leading up to it. To check that out, we will be there as well watching.

Is anybody going to be the 600 in the chat? Ultimate suite experience this weekend. 62 people going to be in the suite. That's awesome. I won't be at the sweet, but I'm doing the double. I'll be at Indy for the, I'm going to work the race for NBC at Indy, and then I'm immediately flying to the 600. Are you really?

Wow. Awesome. Well, there's a sweet if you want. Well, I got an invitation from Marcus Smith to come to the 600, so I'm going to hang out with him the whole day. Hey, I wouldn't pass that up. Perfect. Well, that is it for this week's Ask Jr.

All right, everybody, I appreciate it. You got to thank Xfinity for everything that they do for us and NASCAR. They've done so much for the sport of the years. That X-Fi, it's fast. I'm a customer. Like, I signed up. People think I think that we get everything for free, Mike. They think that?

I think they do. Like, why would you have to pay for it? They sponsor your podcast. Yeah, that ain't how it works. That ain't how it works. But I've got X-Finity Internet, X-Fi. It's fast. It's reliable.

It's always, I've never had it down. I've had it for about two and a half years now. Never had an outage. And it's powerful. It's secure. So we're really appreciative of that Xfinity X-Fi. That's right. X-Fi delivers the speed your devices need.

And by the way, everybody, we love this segment. So continue to send your questions in to add Xfinity racing on Twitter. Just hashtag Ask Junior. All right. Thank you, Xfinity. A proud mere partner of NASCAR. All right, man. That's a good show.

man, Denny was firing on our cylinders. Hard to get him to open up, but he managed to do it today. I hear you, man. That's funny. Hey, I like your cup. Yes, it's new in the Junior Nation retail store. I love that logo. Yeah. I've tried to talk to Kelly about changing our logo officially to that.

Yeah. So if you're, oh, I love this logo. I think this logo would be awesome to go to full time. Yeah, by the way, he's talking about a coffee mug on the table, and the mug has the, it's kind of like a retro J.R.M. Junior Motorsports logo that we've been wearing here. here on some shirts here lately, but the mugs are in with a lot of other new merchandise. So yeah, I'm feeling good about it.

All right. You want one? I do. Well, yeah, I guess. I don't know. I got too many. I got to me. My cupboard and coffee cups were not in a good place.

Keep a cabinet here for some stuff. You don't ever leave it. I don't drink that much coffee. I might drink it once a month or care. I don't drink enough. I don't have coffee in this. Oh. What do you got in?

He needs some high rock. Come on. Let's end the show banging on Matthew again. Come on, do it. By the way, Matthew, actually, I want to give you props. The way you closed last show, last week, was hilarious. Well, it's because he sang. He gave me gold. But the sound design was really good.

Thank you, sir. You did very well. I was laughing. I saw the clip on Twitter. It's awesome. The podcast is way better. You got to listen to the end of the podcast. It's funny.

It's funny. Okay, now bang on me. What? You thought you're going to... Episode 383 is over. We'll see you all later. Have a great week. I need to throw away this rice cake.

Yeah, I know. That's suss. It's stale, sorry. I try to bite it, and I'm like, I hate it. That's not a stale rice cake. It's just how they are. They're awful, man. Don't confuse them for being stale.

That's just how rice cakes are. Check out Dirtymo Media. On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.