The Dale Jr. Download - 392 - Randy Lanier: Speed Funded By Weed

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

What do you get when you combine a drug smuggling enterprise straight out of an episode of Miami Vice with the high-dollar sports car racing world of the 1980s? You get the story of Randy Lanier, and on this week’s episode he joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis to tell it.At one time a top prospect in American motorsports, Lanier made headlines when he was indicted in 1986 for operating a multi-million dollar drug distribution effort responsible for bringing over 300 tons of marijuana to the United States from Columbia. Just a handful of months before he was Rookie of the Year in the 70th running of the Indianapolis 500.Originally born in rural Lynchburg, Virginia, Lanier and his family of seven moved to Hollywood, Florida when he was 13. The sunny beach lifestyle was captivating for young Randy, and was soon introduced to the thriving marijuana subculture of the 1960s. His father, who worked as a draftsman, was concerned about his seemingly wayward lifestyle and got him a job in construction. But, due to his longhaired appearance, fellow construction workers began asking Randy if he knew where to buy marijuana, and his stint in drug dealing began.Randy shares a frightening story of getting robbed at gun-point during a sale, which temporarily took him away from Florida to Colorado. It was there he met a guru, who invited him to an ashram in Boulder where he learned the art of meditation, which proved to be a big part of his survival in prison as well as a cornerstone of his life today. Upon returning to Florida, Randy continued on his new path until tragically losing his brother Glen in a motorcycle accident. The event was catastrophic for the Lanier family, and Randy explains it spun him out, back into the familiarity of selling marijuana. While he may not have realized it at the time, Lanier’s eventual career in motorsports was implanted in the back of his mind, thanks in part to listening to the Indianapolis 500 broadcast on the radio when he was a young boy at his family farm in Virginia. Randy recalls a story from the late 1970s when he was attending a car show at the Miami Beach Convention Center and noticed a SCCA-sponsored booth. He picked up a pamphlet and eventually made the call to inquire about becoming a licensed driver. Soon after, he purchased his first race car: a 1957 Porsche 256. After renting out a small warehouse to be his shop and preparing the car for racing action, he entered his first amateur contest at West Palm Beach Speedway in 1980. As legend would have it, he won. From there he rapidly progressed through the sports car ranks, arriving at the headlining IMSA GT circuit. After spending a few seasons in borrowed rides with minimal results, he decided to take matters into his own hands and form his own racing team. But, to win on a consistent basis required a large bank roll, and so the two roads of Lanier’s life intersected. DIRTY AIRBefore Randy joins the show, Dale, Mike and Matthew discuss: Listeners respond to Dale and Mike’s heated discussion The chaotic Cup race at the Indianapolis Road Course  Indianapolis Oval or Road Course? Dale Jr.’s return to North Wilkesboro  ASKJR presented by XfinityThe fan questions came rolling in about: Doing commentary for other sports Should NASCAR return to Iowa Speedway? The 1995 Impala from MTV Cribs Dale’s perfect tailgate menu 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.

Where are we at? What are you going to do? We're going to do the show. What part? Dale Jr. Download. All right. Ready? Yeah, blah, bra brab-bra-bra-b-b-b-b-b-bh-bh-bh-bh-bh-bh-bh.

Yeah, right-b-bh-bh-bh-bh. You know me. I get fucking weird. Big pickle. It doesn't really bip-bhbhb bother you the size. Some of them are way too big. There's some that are just. gigantic. I'm just not a pickle person.

The driver can't get it up when they're in the seat of the car. But they're all fun. I just can't get over the pickle thing. Pop, just can't loosen up. You see those big muscle guys that are sitting there, you know, straining and getting that thing latched on properly. And just let it happen. I don't really have, I don't know which one's the best.

I mean, the newer ones. Sorry. I got a swollen head. Boy, we don't know what it is. If it could be metal. And there's some that obviously do do it, but there's some. that are like absolutely not I won't do I got this like dent in my ass at your tank yeah it's as good as sex no no it was crazy nobody dude and I mean nobody

wants a leaky seal well that's not what Kyle Petty said but um but da what the is Kyle Petty got to do with this never been more ready but um but um oh my god my That feels like to me that it's been a work in progress for months. I don't know how you put something like that together. I don't even know where you start. This feels like me, somebody that's going out the door and doesn't have to apologize for anything because this is Matthew's last show and he's going out with the bank. I got tears in my eyes.

That was so funny. One last time, baby. One last time. It is Matthew's last show. Got to make you laugh. Matthew. I swear, though, man. Dang.

Those are hilarious. We never know what he's going to come up with. and then that's going to be that's that's that is the that's like the perfect example of what like it's going to be hard to replace right because nobody i mean nobody's that creative or is that has that sick of mind Alex i know you don't my that's that's uh he's got a lot up there he's got a lot of things up there just hanging around did that feel good to get that out there matthew that feel good for you i've got a whole whole like curling.

We all have a whole library of funny crap you guys say. Okay. Half the time you don't hear. Yeah. I don't remember a single thing. Other than the Kyle Petty deal at the end, obviously

where that was last week. But I don't remember any of those things ever. I don't remember Dale saying them. I know. No way did we have an entire conversation about pickles, but he made it.

Right. When did we talk about bills? He built a conversation around. When did I talk about a leaky seal? In an ad read for Valveline, and it's great to get pickles and taint. in the scene episode. Oh my God.

He don't care. He's going. He ain't going to be here next week. He don't care. He ain't beeping a single word, just so you know. No, we're beeping. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. At Dale Jr.

Download in the Bojangles studio with my co-host, Mike Davis, Matthew Dillner. You are a piece of work. Yes. Yes. Alex is here. And it's going to be a great show. we got an incredible guest. Randy Lanier's coming in here.

Randy won the 1984 Emsa Championship and then went to jail. Long time. A long time, 27 years. He has a fascinating story about how he funded his entire career in racing, smuggling drugs, and he's going to come in here all the way,

I think, from Florida to tell us that story. We're really, really lucky. I've been wanting to get Randy here for a long time. It's just fascinating and reading about him and watching some of the documentaries and so forth just gives me more questions. And Randy has a book. It's called Survival of the Fastest. It's out today. Big old book.

I hope I get one. And because I'm sure there's way more details inside there than we've ever heard. And that will we even hear today? So Survival of the Fastest, Randy's story, if you want to check that out. I can't wait to get him in the room, but let's jump right into some dirty air. Dirty Air. You got it. Dirty Air is brought to you by Filter Time.

There's no better way to deal with dirty air than with a filter subscription service that takes care of the hassle and takes that out of buying air filters for your home. They're delivered right to your door. So every time they show up, you know when to change them. Go to filtertime.com and subscribe now. But this is our dirty air. So let's go. Let's talk about it, man.

We had a great episode last week. Big attention. We got a lot of reaction and feedback about our argument. People were like, hey, man, more of that. Not so much who won the argument. Basically, yeah, we want more you and Mike arguing and fighting. We can give them that. Well, I think we absolutely could.

We could if we just rolled on our whole life. I mean, you know, by the way, I didn't feel like that even got heated. Did you feel like that was heated? I didn't feel like it was heated. Everybody else in the room agrees it was heated. But I just say, you and I have that rapport. I don't worry about that stuff. Like you and I can speak our mind.

Me and Mike have argued so many times that we're very comfortable going to that space. Yeah, that's fair. And walking it back. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened more on this show. I know, but we don't really get into current event debates and stuff like that too often. But, you know, maybe it's something we should incorporate more. And I think now that it's easier, I think, too, when I'm working the NBC side of the season,

we're way more in tune with, you know, kind of current events and stuff as far as what's going on. And I don't know, it's, it just feels like the deeper we get into the season, the bigger the storylines, the more intensity that you're seeing in the sport as we're getting, you know, closer to the playoffs. Same for our show. It kind of ramps up throughout the year all the way to the very end. And I think we're just kind of feeding off of that.

And there's some real great rivalries and battles and things happening. Great stuff to talk about. We didn't have this the last couple years, right? That's not a problem. Is it just me? No. Not like this. We've missed it. So it's so nice.

So one of the biggest things that came out of last week's show was the, what the F does Kyle Petty have to do with this comment? I did not see Kyle this weekend. He wasn't working this weekend. Regrettably, I've yet to be able to try to explain the context of that situation because I'm sure he has no idea what the context is. He's just seeing people go, hey, man, that's funny what you said.

What the hell does Kyle Petty have to do of this? And Kyle's probably going, why are you dragging my name into this? Right? He's probably a little insulted. It could be a little offensive if you don't have the context. And, you know, kind of personally, I kind of hope it is offensive to it because you've got it coming, dude. I'm going to try to do him a solid right here, right now on this show. So a lot of you guys don't know this, but Kyle Petty has a new book.

There it is. All right. Kyle Petty's new book is called Swerve or Die? I mean, that's a hell of a headline, in it? So anyways, all of Kyle's friends, hoping I'm still one of them, has been promoting this for him over on their social media handles. I just saw Rick Mass posting it earlier today, but all the guys that he's raced against have gotten a copy.

I checked my mailbox this morning on my way to doing this podcast. This book was in the mailbox. Thank you, Kyle, for even thinking about sending me a copy. You may be regretting that now after wondering what I'm saying. and why I'm using your name in vain, but anyways, Kyle Petty has a new book swerver-die. If you want to check it out, it's where books are sold. And I bet it's equally as entertaining

as anything that Randy has in his book, even though Kyle did not smuggle any drugs that we know of. I think that Kyle's stories, I have heard them. I have been hanging out with this guy for the last several years in the NBC world. And when we're in, you know, when we're just hanging out between shows, the stories that he tells. Yeah.

I mean, the guy just, he just did, he lived his life. I mean, back in the 80s, early 80s and stuff, when he was just kind of coming into the Cup Series, he just did what, he just did it however he wanted to do it. He didn't like. I don't know that he ventured off too far from that either. I know. I'm just, like, he didn't, from his point of view, I don't know,

it's really, he's got an interesting approach to life. Very matter of fact, very carefree. Now you get to explain to him the context behind why you work drug smuggling into his book pitch. Well, yeah, if that's all that we have. You know that that's it. That will be the video. Yeah, if the video is very short and brief, yes, I'll probably have to explain that.

I got a question. After last week's podcast and all that went into it and the videos and everything, did you have any regrets from anything that I said or you said or anything that came out of it? No. You wanted me to admit something, though, so I will do that. I'll do that for you. This is not me admitting a fault or being incorrect. man it's hard for you to say it's hard for you to wait in it oh man I'm gonna say this is gonna be fun for me

I'm gonna say things intentionally that are gonna be hard for him to keep his mouth shut so um we talked about the um the Ross and danything off turn to at Pocono and you didn't know you weren't sure whether they made contact me and Matthew uh felt really confident about that and in my mind then we watched the replay right here in our studio as we're doing the show and it was not as much beaten and banging or not as hard of contact and it wasn't as egregious i guess as i remember it in the moment so when we're watching it back in replay i was like yeah i could see why someone would watch that and go well that's not a big deal you know and uh so it was not as cut and dried or

obvious as I really remember it in the moment. You know, because I mean, in the moment it's happening and it's wow, it's what did we just see? You know, wow, we got Ross in the wall. Denny went side by side there was contact. I mean, you know, it was bigger in the moment

and then when we watch it again, a couple days later, you're like, oh, okay, that's just something I've seen a hundred times. But, you know, I did get a text from Denny and he's like, man, you were right. What? Yeah. I told you this and you know this.

You don't want me to bring that up. No, that's not the part we said we were going to bring up. I got you. Okay. We won't bring that part up. Then he said you were right. And he texted me and said I was right. He's like, man, he's like, that wasn't, he's like, you know, I don't want to, I'm not throwing Denny under the bus here, but he's like, that was that was definitely not just hard racing.

And I think Ross, and one of the things that I didn't get to say was in Ross's interview, I think Ross, and I, Maybe we did go over this, but Ross was kind of like, man, I hope this is retaliation, because I kind of got off easy here, right? I mean, could this be it? Could we just say that this is the deal and it's over with? So anyhow, Ross, all right, so this guy every week, we go to the road course at Indy and dude takes a shortcut or the long road and, I don't know, makes it a shortcut. What would you, I know that everybody's got an opinion over what we saw to end of the

race with him trying to make term one slows down with everybody else he's on the brakes and then right at the last second he just gets off the brakes and says I'm just going to go forward and through the through the joker lane well you're saying he's on the brakes he was on the brakes mike slowing down for term one and then he let off the brakes and went into the the access road slowed down like a fat kid at a salad bar he's that slowed down he didn't slow down he went head first into that access road. I know that, but he was on the brakes. Do we want to replay of that?

So Mike can see this? Matthew's like, Jesus, Mike, do you not pay attention? Do you not watch the race? Right. Like, no offense, but like the last week I thought, you have valid points, but. Lord. You guys. Lord have mercy.

Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. Okay. We're not going to sit here in debate. None of us know too much if he was on the brakes or not. I'm telling you, I would love to know. There's SMT. There's SMT and there's information. How fast do you think he hit the access road?

Probably 100. I don't know. I mean, it's fast. It was fast, right? So like when people hit the brakes, I mean hit the brakes to make the turn, they got to slow down way more than that, right? He was slowing down to go into the corner, Mike. He wasn't.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You got to slow down to make that corner. He had no intention to make that corner. Yeah, he did. Well, he didn't act like it. All right. This is what happened, Michael, okay? Can I just tell you what happened?

Now remember, you were wrong about what you thought you saw. Going back to what you said that that contact last week at Pocono wasn't nearly what you thought it was. You guys got insulting a little bit last week and I. You said they didn't even hit. But I also conceded that part when I watched the replay, didn't I? But you didn't. Do we want to go through this whole process? No, no.

No, listen, listen, listen, I'm watching the race just like you guys are watching the race. And there's plenty of people watching the race that all have different opinions on it. Just respect everybody's opinion. All right. Let's start there. And I'm telling you that I did not see a valid attempt to make that corner. You know, usually when you see people miss their corner, they're going to bounce around a little bit and then go drive around, but you slow down so much. This guy hit it fast.

He did. So I think Ross mentioned in his post-race interview that he had went. through there in practice, unintentionally missing term one and had to take that route in practice. So he was aware of it, right? And for him, I think for him to mention that in his post-raised interview tells us all that it was possibly something he absolutely knew was an option before he got down to term one, right? And so I think as I'm watching data and all the things that are available to me, when they

get the green flag for that final restart, Ross has everything. every intention of going through turn one properly. We get down in the breaking zone. He's still on that same plan. We get about 80% into that breaking zone where he's really got to make that decision of I'm going this way or I'm not, and he chooses plan B.

In that final few moments, he realizes I'm on the far left side. I've got six cars to my inside and several rows. I mean, there's, it's impossible. There's no way that he goes through this corner without having to go through the grass, get off track, get possibly spun around, whatever, right? I think he makes the absolute correct choice in going straight.

Because it's not, it's a, that corner is a terribly designed corner, in my opinion. All right, for us to have restarts and you're not going to tell, no one's going to be able to say there's no way that you can stop these drivers from trying to get everything they can get. All right. And so it's, it is, there is some respect issues for sure, but there's all this asphalt and there's all these opportunities to try to get down in the corner. They're going to do everything they can do.

Yeah. And so that, in my opinion, comes down to the track design, right? There being so much room, so much area that these guys, that it's really an issue with how the track is designed in that area that's created. all these issues problems right for restarts and so you're trying to funnel such a wide racetrack where the guys can get to five and six wide down into a one to two one or two wide area and it isn't happening it's not it's not realistic to expect uh that to be you know that to work every time and so anyhow ross in my opinion makes the best choice that he could possibly make

and so he goes straight and comes out racing for the lead in the lead right race the side by side with the with the eight with one of the most amazing displays of driving after he came out the make that pass was insane driving skill and so he gets docked 30 seconds other guys went through there earlier in the day didn't get dock no 30 seconds i think if you if you went through there day before too Yeah. And time out on that. Did you know, you knew that. Like you saw that, you as the broadcaster and been working all weekend, you guys had seen people doing that all weekend, correct?

Yeah. Okay. There were several times on restarts where just out of the corner of your eye, you'd see, on the far right side of the screen, you'd see something just slipped through, right? And we wouldn't, we didn't call it because we are, we start focusing on the battle through turns two, three and four, right? You can't start talking about stuff that's not on the screen. and you're not really sure which cart was anyways. But so they were, like Matthew said, there were several instances throughout the weekend

where guys used that access road. And I don't think that everyone or anyone else had received a penalty. I know that's one of those areas, that's one of those situations where NASCAR makes a judgment call. They made a choice like, we have to do something here, or they felt compelled to do something. I'm not saying that NASCAR's decision was wrong. I'm just surprised that,

it came to that. I'm surprised that the access was actually as quick or quicker than taking the necessary racing line. That to me is something that just should never happen. It shouldn't even be close, right? It shouldn't even be, you shouldn't ever have a design in a racetrack where you're like, well, this could be better if they went through this area. and if we're not making them stop, right, to serve a penalty in turn 12, right? Because there was no rule if they went through this access in turn 1.

Now, if they missed the course and went into the grass, they had to stop in turn 12 to serve a penalty. But if they take this access road, they did not have to stop. That was the problem, is that the design being one thing, I mean, listen, I'm never going to knock the design of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But I will say this. there wasn't a clear defined rule about taking that access road at that point after all these people have been doing it all weekend apparently T.J. said Austin Dillon did it all day on Saturday. So then there could have been some definity or definition to that rule to where you're not having to make a judgment call in the last lap of the cup race. Yeah. Maybe that's as simple as that is they don't even need to redesign that part of the racetrack. Just say, hey, man, you go through here to stop and go in turn 12, just like every other part of the track if you cut it. fixes it. Exactly. Now, when that happened, so you had seen drivers do that all weekend. So now,

put yourself back in the booth on the last lap. You guys are calling the race. When that happened, did you expect Ross to be penalized at that point? And then NASCAR took a while before they even made a ruling on it. They ran most of that lap before they even made a call on it. Were you guys confused up in the booth? I mean, what were y'all thinking? The feedback in social media land and in other places is why did it take long for us to learn what was going on? Well, you know, that's how long it takes to make some of those decisions. And it wasn't that NASCAR had that information and was withholding it, but it does have to come from NASCAR, race control, all the way to our booth.

We have to validate that information and make sure it's correct. And then, you know, we don't want to put out something that's wrong. NASCAR has to correct us. And so then we get the information. We're not withholding it for 30 seconds or 45 seconds. waiting on an opportunity to slip it in there. As soon as we get it and we feel good about it, we put it out there.

In those moments, I don't know why, but I can be patient. If a penalty is coming down and it's two laps to go, one lap to go, and there's an obvious situation like we saw with Ross, I can be patient for NASCAR to make a decision or decide what the decision is. and if that's even after the race, so be it. So you're calling, yeah, you guys have to call the rate. That was the race for the win right there between those two.

And until further notice, until a decision is made, you're calling the race for the win right there between Ross and Tyler Reddick. No questions asked. I just, I know that there was, look, there was just skepticism on whether that was going to, in fact, be the race for the win. What do you do if you're Tyler Reddick? And I think they had this incident just last year, right, at Indy. When Christopher Bell...

What do you do if you're Tyler Reddick? Well, didn't the leader get wrecked by somebody that was actually penalized in their car? Briscoe and Duny Hamill. Briscoe. Yeah, that's not, yeah, I'd say Christopher Bell, briscoe. So, yeah, I don't know. If you're Tyler Redick, you race. Well, you have to because Cinderick was right behind them.

That's right. Cendrick was right behind him. So, I mean, Tyler's trying not to get past with Cendrick, and he's probably not sure whether the one's legit or not. So he's got to do what he's got to do. And he did a great job. You know, Ross didn't have the pay. that the eight car had he even made an you know I love I love the idea that Ross even though he knows his car is not quite as good was like you know I'm I'm gonna throw

this up in there and I'm we'll see if I can steal a win I love that you know a lot of guys myself included you know when you're when you race and you're like running all day long just getting your butt kicked by a handful of other cars you kind of start to feel like man you know the top five be pretty good today and in it unconsciously you you you are settling right you're unconsciously you start you sort of you get off the offense and more on the defense got and try to protect this potential right top five result i might get right where ross never is like that ross is always like win win win win you know every lap right he's driving around they're going more more more faster faster

pass, pass, pass, win, win. And Mike. Access road, access road. Cut to the pits. Cut to the garage. Cut to the campground. Right. You know, and even when his car isn't the quickest car, he's like, man, if I could just get to lead, maybe I can, you know, a lot of people aren't built that way.

It's fascinating. But, you know, Reddick, I was surprised by Reddick's, having a curveball like that thrown at you, right? You come out of the corner thinking, man, I'm looking in the mirror. and I've got a pretty nice little lead. Whoa, who's this guy? What is this? Spotter, information, please. Yeah.

Now this is a new twist. Yeah. New challenge. And he had to be smart through five and six to let Ross have that. Ross was not going to live there. And he's like, you know what, Ross? I'll concede this for a moment. And then he battled back and got back by him.

You know, really, really veteran mentality, being able to kind of to buckle down and and stay smooth and stay composed right that was a that's a tough thing to do in some of those moments especially when some big surprise like that happens so there was a lot of cool things going on there at the end of that race and i think that if you're if your NASCAR you definitely you definitely have to do something there at the end you you hate that he even got to that position you can't allow i mean if ross doesn't get past you can't say that ross is the winner i mean what's your opinion, Mike. Let's just say hypothetically, if Ross does not get passed by the eight car takes the checkered flag. Hypothetically, you can't give Ross the win. I don't think you can,

but I love, hypothetically, I love the idea of having an option to go around something else. Can you imagine if that was just a normal thing on that road course? If drivers could actually take a different route and it may be longer, but it also may avoid the wreck like you weigh the wrist and rewards to it. I mean, that was kind of exciting. I actually liked it. But, but, you know why I like that actually? Because that was a calamity corner.

I mean, listen, the restart right before that where Legano and William Byron felt like they were in top fuel dragsters, not even trying to make a turn and just bowled it on in there and just knocked out everybody. Like, none of that seemed fun if I'm a driver. And I, uh, you know, so again, I don't even fault Ross for doing what he did. I mean, like, that, but no, I don't think you can give him the win. So another thing that was kind of being talked about is going back to the Oval. After, after, this was a conversation going on before the race, right?

Now that we've seen the race, now that we've seen what was going on at the road course and what the new next-year car looks like there, where do you guys land on trying to either stay at the road course, which Roger Penske says we're probably going to be on the road course next year, then maybe the Oval, right? NASCAR wants to go to the Oval. next year. At least that was what I'd heard. So after the race, everything we saw, you want more of that or you want to go to the Oval or you want to leave entirely? Oh goodness. Everybody gets around here. Go, Alex. I think the Oval, because there's so many row courses on the schedule already,

you don't really need another one, and the Oval is pretty prestigious, so that alone they should run that. Matthew. I think we go with the Oval, but only with the Cup series, because the brickyard should be reserved for the brick yard for the Indianapolis 500, and that is it. All right. So that's a difficult thing to do if you're going to have both series there on the weekend, having to re-r-run the Xfinity at IRP, just like they ran trucks at IRP. All right. So then, okay, so send the Xfinity series to IRP.

Just like you did the truck series, there was a wild success over there this weekend as far as a crowd and the event was great. One of the things that I'd be loved to know about that race is the number, the TV number, because that's the one that matters. All right. So when you're trying to sell sponsorship to a, if you're going to sell a sponsorship to a single Xfinity race, and it's at the Indianapolis Speedway, it's a little bit more of an easy sale for sponsors. But if that TV number was great from the truck series compared to other truck series races,

then that's the, that's going to be the tough part. That's going to be the part that actually makes it actually the viable situation to be able to move the Xfinity series there. I love the track. I want to see short track racing. Preach, Mike. Listen, I love IRP as well. I've always about racing at IRP. Before I say, listen, I don't have a problem with the Indy Road course.

I just also want to remind everybody the complaining that was going on after the last cup race at the big oval. I mean, that was multiple years in the making, too. I mean, we didn't have a really good finish or a good race. And I just know how, you know, and I'm just speaking broadly about the NASCAR fan base, which I am part of. I would just say, I don't remember the last time

Indies Oval produced a really good cup race. So take that for what it's worth. I will put my vote in for giving the road course a little bit more run for its money before you go back and change it up again. I think it would be great to go to the Oval

with the new next-gen cards to see what kind of race we'd have. And also, I think that drivers want the Crown Jewel back, want that opportunity to win. win at the Oval and that's something that matters to a driver's career. If you're a guy like Denny Hamlin who said when he lost, he lost the brickyard 400 to Brack Haslowski, I think 2018 or 19, had some contact last couple of laps.

Denny loses the race. I think he gets crashed in turn three and four or something. Anyhow, he got out of the car and said, this has been my greatest defeat. this is this is as low as I've ever been this losing this race is the is the toughest loss of my career and now we've taken away that opportunity for him or anyone else really to try to win that race that that tells you how prestigious winning at the oval is right so I think that I'd be willing to give it a give it a try and see if if the next gen car did a good job there on the oval and also that's fair that's fair The next-gen car is the difference there.

You would definitely want to try that again if the next-gen car is. It's such different racing anyways. As much as I was humored by what I saw on Sunday, I don't know that I want to see that again. You know what I mean? I mean, it was funny, but it's going to be funny the first time. Then we go back next year and do that all over again. And it's not funny the second time, right?

It's a little bit annoying, maybe frustrating to watch all those. guys try to restart and funnel down into term one and do that all over again. Well, it had some embarrassing facts last year, too. I mean, like, these are twice, two years in a row. I mean, last year that they had that turtle stop, whatever you want to call it, that people were running over and tearing up their cars with. I mean, like, they've had, they've not done a perfect race yet on the road course. Yeah, there's been some, some drama there. We could blame the track all we want. I blame the drivers, to lack of respect. I had a conversation about this yesterday where we don't have the policing force in our garage area anymore like we had

with your dad or even rusty, you know, where when somebody does something that's against driver code, somebody pulls them aside or Tony Stewart grabs their neck a little bit and pulls them aside. You can't do that. And what I saw on some of those restarts, especially at the end, was kind of disgusting. You know, even people that I love and know and great, but they were racing with complete lack of respect for the guy. next to him. And it was, in my opinion, it was terrible. Well, I could, I feel like that, you know, what I saw at IRP in the truck race definitely was disrespectful. Yes.

And unwarranted and silly. But the things that were happening in the cup race, it wasn't, you know, like, let's just say Joe Lugano, right? He dives down the inside. Six wide. Six wide. You know, you know, Joey knows that what he's doing is a low, is a high risk, low percentage shot, right? You know, it's like, this probably ain't going to work. But what else does, what other option does he got other than to not try? He isn't going down in the turn going, I'm going to hit this car in front of me, I'm going to turn this guy, I'm going to, I'm going to bulldoze and bowl through here.

He's not really thinking that. He's just going, he's going where everybody else. ain't and that's the track design in my opinion if there was grass they wouldn't be going down there if it was you know if it wasn't like eight lanes of asphalt headed down into a

a 90 degree turn that funnels into two lanes of asphalt I mean they will this it's a in my opinion this is what you get when you try to take an oval and turn it into a road course

and I you know I know I know it's ending. I'm not a huge fan of some of the things about that layout for the cup car, right? We've got better brakes.

Everything about this car, as far as the brakes and everything, allowing these guys get so much further down into the braking zone, all these things sort of came together to to create what we saw on Sunday. I don't know what you do, but I think it'll just keep happening. go back there next year, you're going to see the same thing.

You can talk, I mean, you will, you know, drivers can talk about respect. Everybody can complain about the disrespect and all the things, but man, we are going to go back and nothing's going to change. Because there's no accountability like they're used to be. I don't, I disagree with that. In the garage, you don't, you don't agree with that? There's plenty. How?

Who's holding those young drivers accountable anymore that make those decisions? I, well, I mean, there's a long list of drivers that are like Kevin Harvick. Don't ask him for an example, Matthew. Don't ask for any of them. No. I think that there is accountability in the garage, and I think that there's accountability in the sport, and I feel like that that isn't enough.

Even if Dale Earnhardt were driving out there on the racetrack, that would not be enough to stop what we saw happening again. I think it's, I think that the only way to kind of, you don't see this stuff, I don't think we'll see this type of stuff getting down into turn 1 at Watkins Glen you know we didn't see a good point yeah we didn't see it we didn't see this type of stuff

turn 11 at Sonoma which is a parking lot I think it's the you know that you got eight lanes asphalt on a restart heading into heading into a tiny little funnel it's what it is it is what it is it's a design issue I can respect that I have different to opinion but you're not wrong about that

you've got that wide of lanes that many lanes and then you've got a basically a 90 degree turn at the end of it. But to Matthew's point, I agree with you. The driver knows that angle they've got to take to be able to make that turn. Absolutely. So what options is Joey Ligano have? Well, he could not try to make

that angle, which was impossible without hitting five cars. He could have done that. He's a smart driver. He's one of the best in the world. He needs to know that. It's almost like, yes, you've got all this asphalt. It's a trap. Don't do it because you cannot make that turn. Is that a design flaw or is that just the driver's not thinking about what it takes to make

that turn? I think that's probably what it is. But yeah, there is a lot of asphalt to play with for sure. It's a tough thing, but I think that maybe we need to go run the road course again, see if we can get this better. So we can do a better job. Hey, I had a question, and you may not even have an opinion about it, but I was dying to ask you and I saved it for the show, what did you think of Ross?

his interview with Dave Burns afterwards. Where Ross is a bit annoyed? Yeah. Go ahead. It seemed a little out there, didn't it? Get some context. Well, so Dave Burns asked what I thought was an obvious question. Did you plan on hitting that access road?

And it almost seemed like Ross was a bit bewildered by the question. And he said, no, Dave. I didn't plan it. And he seemed a bit annoyed. And I don't know. I thought that the most awkward interview was definitely going to be Richard Childress. Tyler Redick one, but it wasn't. It was Ross, you know, talking about the access road.

I didn't know if you, if you even noticed it if you had an opinion. I did notice it, and I didn't really have an opinion about it because I think in the moment the guy's just sitting there learning that he got disqualified and he's not going, you know, he's sitting there with the top, I don't know, top five finish. What he, what, did he cross the line second or third? Yeah, second. So, I mean, you just get out of the car and you're like, damn, I thought I was second. Yeah. And now I'm, what, 30th, 30th, 25th, whatever, that, that 32nd put him back outside the top 20. So I think that you're stewing over that a bit.

And he could have been asked any question and gave, he could have been asked, hey man, how about this weather? And he'd have gave a freaking annoyed response. Because I think that he's just getting out and trying to come to terms with what all just went down. Denny said something interesting on Doorbunper Clear this week. Denny Hamill was a guest on that podcast and he said that he's heard that about Ross where Ross gets so laser focused on something that he almost develops

his tunnel vision to where he's completely oblivious to anything else going around him. And so if he was in that zone, in that lane, whatever it is in his mind, that the questions, you're right, no matter what they would have asked, he was now sort of snapping out of it into reality again. I didn't know, I didn't know that about Ross, but that's interesting if that's in fact true. Yeah. So, you know, just really compelling. How do you think what other cool things came out of?

any podcasts on Door Bumper Clear, I'm pretty excited to listen to that one. Reaction Theater has a song about Denny with Denny in there that right there should win a podcast award. I mean, it was so funny. The guy's totally making a dig at Denny. First of all, whoever wrote it did so Sunday night after he learned that Denny was going to be a guest in the show. It's fantastic writing. And then it's also a really good execution and performance.

But there's a song on Reaction Theater. I think it's the last song, the last call. It is so funny. What else? Denny was good. A lot of insights. on the, he gave his opinion about the Kyle Bush salary negotiations. Yeah.

Yeah. That's an interesting perspective if you're Denny, right? It's his teammate. The Redick stuff. And also, but Denny also being an owner can certainly understand Joe Gibbs's perspective in this, you know, negotiation is very fascinating. What did you say, the Tyler Redick stuff, I thought was neat that they went there. And like Denny doesn't hold any, you know, he'll talk about anything.

He will. He talked about the Tyler Redick announcement. and the unfortunate circumstances for Richard. He brought up a good point. I shouldn't give it this all away, but he brought up a good point why it's actually best for RCR to get this news out there now because now they can at least go sell

knowing who their driver will be in 2024 or that it won't be Tyler so they can go make their plans better. Not that it made it any better or makes it feel better for RCR. I just thought Denny had a lot of good, very open, honest, compelling, as you would expect, you know, feedback. and he gave it man then he's always such a great guest trying to convince him to host a co-host or co-host or actually come in here and host a delgioner download get him to have somebody come in here who he wants to interview and and I think that'd be pretty fun him just having a conversation with somebody that he's wanting to have a conversation and he's good I text Denny and we were talking about that and and we were thinking maybe Ross would be his guest about that I mean again just

just shut the door and just listen I wonder what Shut up and listen, right? I mean. That would be awesome. What do you mean? That'd be amazing. I don't think Ross would do it. Well, I think in this room they could sit down and literally probably have a great conversation.

Probably. Yeah, and come out of here with a good understanding. But I tweeted this and I stand by it. I don't want them to become friendly. I don't want them to get past it. Like, I want them to emerge and stay rivals. You can be, let me take it back. You can be friendly, but I don't want you to be friends.

So if they come in here and end up being best buds, I don't want it. it. We didn't do the sport of justice. We need this rivalry bad. What if they teamed up and started rivaling rivalries with other drivers? What if they were like the Rock and Roll Express tag team? I can't think of two other candidates that would be able to make rivalries with other drivers than those two right there. They could definitely do it. But yeah, Rock and Roll Express.

Name the top three tag team. themes of all time. Of all time. All right? Rock and Roll Express, right? That's number one. That's not number one. Would you call like a, I mean the horseman, you know, that's four people with Tolly and Arne and my top, my number one is Magnum TIA and Dusty Roads. Okay. That was a short run, but man, that for me that was pretty cool. Did they have a name for the? No. No, I think you've got to have a name, don't you? No.

No, not one of you're as cool as them. The Road Warriors. The Road Warriors, for sure. I like that. Rock and Roll Express. Rock and Roll Express's got to be third then. Wait a minute. So was Rock and Roll Express better than Midnight Express?

Yes, but it's close. Yes. Rock and Roll Express beats Midnight Express, but they were both very good at their problem. All right, number three, Rock and Roll Express. Can you name one of the Rock and Roll Express? Ricky Morton. Ricky, uh, uh,

Okay. Is that one? Is it... Look up. What was it... Look at it. I think Ricky Morton was one. Wasn't a steamboat in a tag?

Steemboat was a... He was in a tag team with... Damn, I got a click marker. Snooka. I don't remember. All these old wrestlers were bringing me back, man. We're going like... I was eight...

Five years old. Remember Polish Power Ivan Putzky? No. Oh. At least we know what we're going to get crucified on social media this week about it'll be about this because we got this wrong you got it was robert gipson and rickie morton yeah rick morton i was right you got it right 50 you were right about that doesn't a 50 pass a test yeah that'll work these days it does you just be a 70 now we've lowered it

it's like really lower it to whatever passes everyone so flare had his last match did you see yeah till his next match i think he's done really yeah i saw this pretty rough a buddy my send me some video and images of it, and I was like, holy smokes. You're right. Yeah. Anyway, well, good. Good for him. We've got some news to announce.

Oh. It isn't tag teams. I know. We're running a little bit long on the dirty air, by filter time. Just a little. Actually, this news has already been announced. It came out this morning. What?

Has? It came out this morning? Yeah. By the time the podcast comes out. But it hadn't out. Oh, man, I'm confused. Okay. Oh, actually, it would have come out five minutes ago.

Woo! Yeah. It would have come out five minutes ago. go by Jeff Gluck of the Athletic. He broke the news and then, you know, there'll be a press release here coming from the Junior Motorsports here in a few minutes. But as you guys listen to this podcast, there is news out. And it is Dale Earnhardt Jr. is back behind the wheel of what number? It's number three. Get you some of that. Yeah, it's going to be number three. And basically, so in 1993, I raced at Northwell Sparrow Speedway in the number three, Sundrop, Shavy,

Lumina, and we have partnered back up with Sun Drop again to basically recreate this race car. When we go race at August 31st for the Cars Tour at North Woodsboro, we'll be driving a car that is a throwback to 1993 when I race there. All-green race car with a white number three on it. I said back in, I guess, whenever 2010 or whatever, when I ran that Wrangler car, that was the last time. I'd ever drive number three, but you're wrong about that. You never say never, I guess. Lesson learned. We are back behind the wheel, and we are excited about that.

I just can't wait. I'm going to the race tonight. So while you're listening to this, if you're listening to this on Tuesday night, we are at the track right now watching the mods run. And then there's racing the rest of the month in August, and then the cars tour races there on the 30th and 31st, qualifying on the 30th, racing on the 30th. first 125 laps, limited late models as well. There'll be a lot of fun to be had and I'm going

to hopefully go out there and run all the laps in my little green sundrop car. It's so cool, man. That car is so good looking. Now, a couple other little points here. One is there is going to be merch. A lot of people ask when we come out with a special paint scheme or a car, certainly with the number three, there is going to be merch so you can go to jrmracing.com for that or just stay in touch with the social media feeds. Also, Dirtymo Media. going to produce a six-part docu-series that's going to be for our YouTube channel called Roots and Revival. Dale Jr. is going to be hosting that, and so, yeah, can't wait. Six parts. Six parts with some bonus episodes, I might say. But yeah, we're going to have,

we're going to do it right. Dirty Mo Media, this is what we're built for. And so we'll be going to the mod race tonight as well. So check that out. That's going to premiere the first episode, the first installment of Roots and Revival will be next Tuesday, August 9th on Dirty Mo Media's YouTube channel. So, and then the last thing I have here, just look, buy tickets still, right? We're going to always, we're going to evangelize that all month. You can buy tickets at North Wilkesboro Speedway.com. Also, if you're not in the area and you're not going to buy tickets, you can buy a pay-per-view

and watch all of this racing on RacingAmerica.com because Racing America is part of it. It's actually racingamerica. TV, Mike. Is that right? Yes, sir. It's right there in front of you. I know that racingamerica.com, if you go there, it has the button. It has that stuff.

have the button. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. You guys are hitting it on both sides. I like it. Yeah. There you go.

You can also go to Racer or racexr. Plus, racexr. plus. But anyhow, yeah, actually, you know, if you want to watch it on the stream, that's fine. If you want to come out and get a ticket, tickets are 15 bucks. I mean, it's really, really reasonable to be able to come out there and watch the event. Ticket, 15 bucks each day. Racing starts approximately at 730. I'm going to probably head out there, get there around 5.30, 6 o'clock and get settled in.

And make sure, if you love Sundrop, let them know and go to the store, pick up another six-pack. If you've never tried Sundrop, if it's possible that you're out there and you've never tried it, all right? It is a citrus-flavored soda. This stuff was made in North Carolina. I kind of originated around North Carolina. It's, you know, my dad used to have a sundrop deal, did commercials for them, cardboard standups. My mama Martha made sundrop cake.

It's been in our, you know, it's been in my grandparents' house forever. Dad's, you know, grew up around it. I grew up with it around, you know, when we used to hang out with dad at the farm shop and DEI, the refrigerator had sun drop in it as long as I was alive. I mean, it's just been a part of our family. we've had partnerships with other products in the past but this has kind of always kind of been at our core and you're just glad to have an opportunity to partner back up with them hopefully they get you know they get a lot out of this and enjoy this little this little partnership and

maybe it develops into something more on the on the regional grassroots level with our late mall stock program but just thrilled to be able to put this car back on the racetrack in 1993 I qualified for the race I got in a little accident on the backstack straight away. Ended up having to finish the rest of the race a little damaged. Bent the front suspension. Toad was messed up. The car didn't run very well after that.

But hopefully we have a better experience this time. And yesterday they had cars on the racetrack practicing. I was watching the stream most of the day. Checking all that out. So I can't wait to get there today and see all the fans that come out to the first race. The mods running tonight at 50 laps. Tomorrow, Wednesday. There's also one other piece of information that's coming out today.

Who's your crew chief? Oh yeah, Josh Barry. So Josh is going to oversee the whole operation. I asked Josh to race, and we got another car that he could have ran. But he was like, nope, I want to help you. It's going to be more fun to go and help you. So he's insisted to not drive and to help me out, which I'm thrilled about because I'm going to need to lean on him about my pace and saving tires

and how to run the race and the choices that we make and all that. So, you know, leaning on him how to drive the car and what I'm feeling and so forth. These guys, we're going to do some other things, too, that I just kind of want to touch on real quickly. Each day on 30th and 31st, we've got a Q&A. They're sold out, 75 to 150 people. We're going to have drivers that are going to be competing in the race, come and sit with us. We're going to learn who these guys are, talk about where they race and what it means to them to beat at North Walesboro Speedway competing. that's going to be so fun for me to be able to highlight some of these guys.

And I've implored Mike to take this six-part series and try to do the best job you can to shine a light on the cars tour and the drivers and the people competing. This is just a great opportunity for them. I want to make the most of that. So that'll be in some of the content that we produce as well as far as our podcast and other things that will be happening right around the race. You'll be hearing about some of these drivers we're going to be competing against

and learning some of these names. So it should be a good time, and I hope everybody enjoys it. We're thrilled to be a part of it. And this is just a continuation of trying to put together something fun and cool for this experience at North of Wiltsboro Speedway. What's up, Dirty Mo Media fans? This is IndyCar driver, Connor Daly. And comedian Joey Mulanero.

And we're Speed Street, Dirty Mo Media's newest podcast. We dive into the latest happenings in IndyCar, NASCAR, and F1 every week, as well as life, on and off the track. Speed Street is available now on all major podcasting platforms. And make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Speed StreetPod. All right, everybody, super excited to be able to bring in this next guest, Randy Lanier, 1984, MC Champion, and just got an incredible story, very fascinating. We're thrilled to be able to bring him in here because of our partner, Ally.

Ally has been helping us bring in some pretty awesome guests every single week. They're a great supporter of our show, and they do a lot in the sport. So we're thrilled to have ally as an ally. They're a great ally of ours. So fortunate for that partnership to be able to have the opportunity to do this show. I'm not sure we've had a guest this year that was more anticipated by you, yourself, Dale Jr. So I'm looking forward to it myself. I didn't know a lot about him, but wow.

And the research, this guy's got a story. Can't wait to hear it. That's right. So let's welcome Randy Lanier to the Dale Jr. Download. In this MSA endurance series, a guy who has progressed so much. He's a very emotional guy, Steve Evans. Boy, he just gets in that automobile. He drives it as hard as he can.

But around the pits, he's really a nervous, nervous manner. There he is. Hey, I've been wanting to meet you for a lot. It's nice to be, too. I'm liking your shop, man. Yeah. You know what? So it's awesome to have you here, man.

Well, thank you. Yeah. So I've listened to some of the podcasts you've done and watched the Netflix show and just kind of want to know right off the bat. Like, Randy, it's been a lot of documentation on your life in the last several years, right? Yeah. That would have, you know, how did you come about to the decision of, okay, I'm ready to tell this story? Because, you know, you could have just said, you know, I'm going to, I got my life back.

I'm going to, I'm going to just do my thing. and I don't want to tell that story, right? But you did, and you were pretty transparent about that. So how did you come about to make that decision? And also, how have you felt about the feedback? I'm sure it's been pretty interesting, some of the stories that you get told. The thing about being transparent about my story is through the years, all the trials and tribulations and the struggles and the hardships that I went through in the joint,

I come to understand one of my purposes. and that's to help others. We're all here for purposes, and our purposes change throughout our journey. One of the purposes that kind of sticks with us on this journey is being of service to others. So you see, I got a T-shirt on. This is a nonprofit organization.

And if you're a cannabis prisoner and you're nonviolent, we support you. That's what I was, a non-violent, first-time offender, cannabis prisoner. and I got sentenced to the remaining balance of my natural life. I got a life sentence for a cannabis case. There's 38 states right now that's legal in some form of fashion. And all the doctors and all the scientists and medical experts

have proven many, many ways how this plant can be a healing plant. So with the people that are incarcerated, you not only incarcerate the individual, but you incarcerate the family because now you separated the person of the family from their family. So we try to support the families that are going through this struggle and this hardship. We do that like in a multitude of ways. It's called freedom grow.org. It's a nonprofit 501C3. We're all volunteers.

None of us take a salary. All right? I do it. We do it on our own time. I go to events. I get letters signed. asking Joe Biden to release the nonviolent cannabis prisoners so they can be home with their families.

We also have programs like a gifting program. It's called a wish program. If you're a nonviolent cannabis prisoner and you're part of freedom grow, you let us know who you are, and we look at your background, make sure you're nonviolent. If it's your birthday, your mother's birthday,

your grandmother's birthday, your children's birthday, if it's a family's member's birthday, You tell us what you want, and we make it happen. It's called the Wish Program. So we do things for holidays. Like, for example, we had 178 cannabis, nonviolent prisoners. They had 126 children. So we made up Easter baskets for the 126 children.

Put little water bottles that said, you are strong, you are brave, and you are smart. We put little Rubik's Cube, Activity Books, Easter bunnies, and candies with the $25 Walmart gift card. And for Christmas, I had 205 prisoners at the time, so we sent 205 Christmas cards with a $100 Walmart gift card. So why am I being transparent? Because I want to help others. I want to be of service to others that's going through the hardships and the struggles that I went through. And I've got to tell you, it's unnecessary hardships and struggles because no one should be locked up for this plant.

Do you know how many prisoners there are of nonviolent cannabis prisoners in our country right now? Yes. There's a figure between 30 to 40,000 in the county jails and all the state prisons and the federal prisons. So it's quite a few. It's way too many. And things are starting to change a little bit. Our president said he's going to do something about it on his platform, but that hasn't come about yet. So I'm out there

We're trying to FreedomGrove.org is out there trying to spread the message and it's a good message. What are you doing with the rest of your time these days? Man, I've been writing a book. I finished the book and awesome to hear to promote this a little bit.

The book comes out today. Hey, I'm on Dale on Hard Show and the book comes out today. Survival of the Fassus. Survival of the Fassus. I'm like really proud of it. I'm a first time published author and it's about tales of Marijuana smuggling, racing, and prison.

I can't wait to read it. Everything else that I've seen is just so fascinating. I wouldn't even know how to compare you, but we had Gary Ballou on the show a long, long time ago. Gary was a racer also had a business in smuggling. So his name may come up multiple times during this conversation because that's the only other thing I can compare this to. but he is in his show his story is fascinating as well the interesting thing for him though is that when

he got out of jail he went back to smuggling and so i was thinking i couldn't really understand that and when i asked you about it i was like man what weren't you pretty sure you were going to get busted this second time why would you go back and do all that over again you know they're watching you know that they are you know your names in the database like you ain't going to be able to get away with this. And he's like, I just had to do it. I was just to the rush. He almost said that the thrill, adrenaline that he got from smuggling and running from the Bahamas and back and forth up to the coast was as much as exciting as driving the race car. And that he almost missed that thrill, right, of trying to out smart the government and the police. Well, my viewpoint from my

perspective is we all have priorities, different priorities in our life. We have the outer priority, the excitement, the adventures that creates all the adrenaline, and we have the inner priority, our family, things that we need to take care of with our own self, getting to know who we really are. And my 27 years in the joint, seven of them was in solitary confinement. Oh, why? So, well, I would get caught up in investigations of escape. So through those seven years, my longest stint in the hole was, that's what we call it the whole, was two years. So those two years in solitary confinement gave me a lot of time to contemplate and really

think about and meditate, do a lot of meditation on myself. And I've come to understand that if you're chasing stuff in your life, there's no need because we all have everything we need right here within us for real and so when you start looking at your priorities you're and sometimes we can get caught up on the outside priority and the excitement the adrenaline the rush but now we have an inner priority and if we get caught up too much on the outer priority we get out of balance and we can get on a mindset that's all about what we're doing outside. But we have something that's more important,

and that's our inner priority of really getting in tune with who we really are and what our inner priorities are with our family and things like that. So that helps even out to kill. So you don't have to chase out for happiness. Happiness is right here, and I'm not trying to say a cliche,

but everything we need is right in here. And when you started living with your intentions from the hard, an abundance of things, the right people with the right time, the right opportunities, it comes about because you attract it. Ah, yeah. My wife believes in the law of attraction and, you know, thinking and imagining things and bringing those things into your world, you know. And I think that I probably didn't. I was the opposite. Yeah.

You know, I, when I would race, I didn't wish for a certain result because I felt like that I was wanting to set myself up for failure, right? And so, but anyhow, she's kind of changed the way I look at things in that regard. But let's go ahead and start, man. You grew up in Virginia. I'm a country boy. How did y'all end up moving from Virginia to Florida? Well, back in the 60s, my dad was kind of drinking kind of heavy, and we had a relative

here in South Florida. And every summer, we usually go down for the vacation to stay with my aunt's house. and he got her up his butt, I guess, to go to Florida, and he auctioned the house up and sold the house on the auction. Got all of about $6,000 for the home. And we moved to Florida. Who's we? How big is the family?

Our family, five of us. Five of them. Yeah, I have three brothers and one sister, my mom and my dad. And so you go to Florida, and what was your life like there? moving down to Florida as a teenager coming from my grandmother and my grandfather grew tobacco. So I'm used to poking at the hogs and chopping wood and running through the tobacco fields. And so coming to Florida and seeing the beaches and all the girls in bikinis and all the lifestyle was kind of exhilarating and exciting. And I like to change.

It was nice. When did you smoke your first joint? I was 14 years old. Yeah. And so when you got to Florida, you were introduced to marijuana. When I got to Florida, I was introduced to marijuana at a young age. I don't recommend that for any family, by the way. That's just what I started down the road at a young age.

And that started early. Yeah, and so you started selling, dealing in school and stuff. Yeah. Right? Started dealing to my construction. I got a job at a construction site, digging footers. Okay. All right for the out in the hot sun, young kid,

I had long hair, and construction workers started hitting me up. I think they noticed the long hair to ponytail, kept it on a ponytail, and I figured, okay, I can sell them and make a little bit and smoke for free. Really? Describe the scene back now. I mean, was pretty common to, is marijuana pretty common? What was the scene back then? I guess this was, what, the 70s?

That's the late 60s. Late 60s, early 70s. Okay. Yeah. So it was pretty loose back then, I imagine. It was, we would go to parks on the weekends, like on Saturday and Sunday, and there would be bands playing. We'd call it like a love then, like people smoking weed everywhere and eating LSD. And that's just, was the times in the late 60s.

It was open. When did you meet your wife, Pam? I met her. I was 16 years old, 17 years old. Yeah. Met her a long time ago at a concert. Grand Funk Railroad. I don't know if you know who that is.

Yeah, at a Grand Funk Railroad concert. And so what did you think when he saw her like? Oh, I liked it. You knew it in my. Yeah. I wanted to hang out with her. Yeah. And so what was she doing?

We're still hanging out too, by the way. What was she doing? She was right in front of me, dancing. So, you know, and I had a pocket full of joints. So, you know, I'm passing joints out at the concert. So how quickly were you going just from smoking joints to actually dealing? Like, what was that time frame like? It took me a little.

I didn't do it right away. Okay. I was a smoker first. Maybe less than a year. Well, yeah, that's pretty quick, though, right? Yeah. A year. I mean, and so did you give up the construction job?

Well, eventually I did. I get, and I worked for construction for a while, but then at a young age, I had gotten ripped off for, and a drug, in a selling marijuana, and I got clipped for 35 pounds, and I moved to Colorado. I didn't move. I went on vacation.

What happened? Yeah. Well, I don't know. I was, I think I was 17 at the time, and I was selling 35 pounds of weed, and it was a rip-off. What you mean? The guy pulled a piece on me, a gun, and took my weed. Oh, really? So he just, is that what happened in the house?

That's what happened at my house. Yeah, Pam and you both were there? Right. Right, okay. So what, so these guys come in and you knew right away when you answered the door that something wasn't right. Right, yeah. You didn't know the guy.

right i didn't i knew one of them i didn't know the other one and so this was like my gut told me don't do this but you were it was you know the money and the money and and and trusting yeah i'm a trusting guy uh you know i want to believe what someone tells me i still to this day i i i want to believe what someone's telling so this guy walked in with his friend put a gun to y'all's head taped y'all up yep took 35 pounds of marijuana out of the house yep and Ransacked a place. Yep. And then when they walked out and it got quiet and you realized they were gone, Pam's shook up.

She's more than shook up. She's devastated that this is what I'm doing. She didn't really? I had been keeping it from her. Really? Yeah. Even though, I mean, she kind of had to know you were yelling a little bit. She had, sure, because I always had weed and always had money.

But now that was a big, she saw a lot of weed that day. 35 pounds sounds like a lot. Yeah. Is that a right? Well, I know in context of what you're going to is probably not. Back then, it was a lot. 35 pounds. Yeah.

All right. Damn. What did that do to you? After, you know, like, after you got clipped, what, you know, what happens then? I had to call the guy out that I got it from and tell him that, hey, I lost your weed. What do you say? Coming and talk to me. And he was good about it.

Really? Yeah. He said, look, part of the deal. You know, things go wrong. Did he check it out to make sure? To make sure that you were telling the truth? Well, I think he knew. Yeah.

He knew, of course he came in my house. No. And he knew, but when I explained who it was, he knew who they were. He knew one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He knew the guy that had the gun. Okay. And he said, look, just pack up everything and leave.

He told you to pack everything up and leave? Yeah, I had a rental house. Why? It was a house that I had leased. Why did he want you to leave? Well, I don't know. Maybe he was going to go do something to these guys. I don't know.

Just wanted you to be out of town when it happened. Yeah. Whatever, right? You just go cool off? I just go, yeah, so I went to Colorado. You went to Colorado? I went to Colorado. I went to Colorado.

Why Colorado? I was going to California. I just didn't make it. You were going there for what, you didn't know how long? You were just kind of going. I had a VW bug. Who was with you? Did they don't get to California?

Pam go with you? Pam, I went by myself. Why did you leave Pam? Because she's, she's younger than I am. She's like 16. Okay. She's got to stay home. She's, no, let me see how well.

She was about. I think she was 17. I was 18, maybe. But she still had life to finish. She was in school. Yeah. She was in high school. Damn, is she mad?

She's sad? What's her emotions? She's mad and I take off and I leave. It's funniest thing because I got this little VW red VW bug and it's got an air conditioning unit that's underneath the dashboard. I take it apart and I put weed all up in it. I want to have my burn. So I drive off, I ended up picking up a hitchhiker somewhere down the road, and he's going to Aspen, Colorado.

I've never heard of Aspen. I said, all right, I'll take you. So I take him to Aspen. He's got a golden retriever with him in the backseat of the BW bug. So we go to Aspen, and I really like Aspen. And it ended up being a really good thing because there I met a good. A guru is a guy that's from India that has an ashram in Boulder, Colorado. And these people are all, I'm a vegetarian at the time too, by the way.

Okay. All right? So it's kind of in line with some of my thinking. So I started kind of listening to this guru and his mahomeths. And I go to Boulder and I started staying at the ashram. And now I'm like passing out. passing out Sunday dinners at the ashram and meditating. And I'm kind of liking it because I'm at peace, you know.

Yeah. So, but it ended up being a good thing because when I get pinched on the smuggling case. You knew how to meditate. I go to prison. And it's like, you know what? I'm okay, man. I'm good. It took me a long time to get to a certain point of forgiveness for all my witnesses.

I had a lot of people. We'll get there. But it ended up being, and this is, I swear, things happen for reasons. And I like to say, things happen for good reasons. We don't know the understanding at the time when something like a tragic thing happens, and you think, what the hell did that happen for? There ain't no good reason in that. But then down the road, you might see it that, you know what?

This led to this, and this is why I'm here at this place in my life right now. So you're in Colorado. How do you end up back? How long were you there? Yeah. How long did you stay there? And what made you return to Florida? I was there about three months.

That's it? That's it. Yeah. And then they called you up and said come back? No, no. I just was wanting to go back home. Okay. I'm done.

Pam came back and she visited me for about a week. Okay. And that's the first time she ever thrown on the plane. I know. What did she say when she showed up in Colorado and seen your new life? What's she saying? Well, the new life started developing while she was with me. Yeah.

She wasn't into the meditation like I was. No. No, she wasn't into the guru. I was, she wasn't. Right. Yeah. Interesting. So you end up going back to Florida.

Going back to Florida. And what did you do when you got there? I started work in construction again. Again. Yes. And are you, how, are you, I mean, are you thinking, man, I'm going to keep selling weed? Well, no, I'm not selling weed now. I quit selling with you.

He quit. You got out of it. Right. The day you got clipped. Like, it was that when you decided, I quit. I'm done with this. I'm done with this. And so even in Colorado, like, that was a life that is in your past.

You're not going back. I'm not going back. And so you end up kind of leading a pretty straight life. You end up going to a car show, right? There's not a fair. Well, something happened in between that. What happened? So I grew up dirt biking.

I love dirt biking. Myself, my brothers, we, I have a couple of the brothers. One was in Vietnam. My other two brothers, my younger brothers, was with me, so we were dirt biking. My brother had just come home from Vietnam, and my one brother had a 750 Honda. And every paycheck he was working construction, too, I'm 18 now, he's 17. Every paycheck, he'd put chrome or whatever he could do, whether it was hitters or whatever, he was fixing that 750 Honda up.

And I borrowed it one day, go to the beach. on a nice cruise and come back. And he comes out of the house. We're living with our parents now. And I tell him, man, it's a beautiful day for a cruise. He says, that's just what I'm going to do. I'm going to go for a cruise. So he takes off.

I've got like an El Camino. I've got a dog I want to take to obedience training. So I load my dog up in my El Camino. I go. And I'm driving down the road. And there's like these detours. There's a bad act. accident. And I'm going, the hell, that looks awful bad. So I go on to the dog canine place,

the obedient training school, and a guy pulls up and says, hey, man, you got to go to the hospital. Your brother just got an accident. I said, I just passed it. I saw it. So I shoot over to the hospital, and it was my brother Glenn. And he didn't make it. He had gotten, a guy had ran out like a stop sign and teaboned him. Oh, no. And so when that, happened I had been at the group at the ashram meditating on the weekends and not selling weed work in construction and for whatever reason I got away from all the the meditation in the ashram I and I went back to selling weed so that little

moment of tragedy sort of spun you out spun me out man yeah it spun me out I said you know I don't know maybe I was putting a lot of into this but I decided, you know what, this ain't what it's at, and I'm going to get back to doing what I know. Yeah. How long did it take you to come to turns with that loss? We was, that was my closest brother. And it took a while. You know, it took a while. Yeah. Took a minute. Took a long time. Yeah.

So what's the relationship at that time with the rest of you? your family. I mean, pretty close. You live with your parents. Yeah, we're close. Yeah. So how did that change the house? You know, I mean, that kind of, you know, we, all of us has kind of deal with some sort of loss and we've seen it destroy families and we've seen it, you know, it impacts people all different. My, you know, my sister might deal with something differently than the way I deal with it. Yeah. You know, how did you, how did the house move forward? Well, the house, my dad was an alcoholic at the time. And right after that, he stopped drinking. Yeah, he was a motorcycle guy too.

So he stopped drinking and even stopped smoking cigarettes. So it was tough. Just having, as you know, when you lose someone that you love dearly, it hurts. But in a way, it bound us together a little bit. Yeah. I'm sorry, did they know you were dealing? Did your dad know? Yeah, they knew because when I was living with him,

and we had taken like a carport and made it a bedroom. Okay. And that's where I was living. So he knew my own entrance. People was coming in and out, but it was cool. They didn't chastise me about it. Where's your home at?

Like, kind of give me a lay of the land. You got it out in the, I mean, this is the late 60s, early 70s in Florida. Is it, how close to your neighbors? Like, how much privacy do you have? What's your concern with traffic coming in out of your house like that and what you're doing? So we're living with my parents. We were in the neighborhood like any neighborhood. So I tried to keep it so it wasn't constant traffic.

No, I tried to minimize it as best I could. And eventually, my first house, I was 17. I moved out and leased my first house. So when I came back from Colorado, I lived with them until my brothers passed away. and then I moved back out and got another house. I always look for houses on property. Oh, a lot of space. A lot of land.

Yeah, yeah. So my neighbors ain't so close. Right. Yeah. So how did you end up getting interested in? So you love motorcycles. You had a, you know, what turned you on to motorsports, though? So you go to this car show.

I go to the car show, Miami Beach Convention Center. and I had been going to Daytona and Seaboring watching people race. And I had an interest since I was a kid. I just hearing stuff on the AM radios back in the 60s when my grandpa and my uncles would listen to them in the tobacco barn. That's where I would go on every weekend we'd go and make homemade ice cream. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd turn ice cream.

I just couldn't wait. You know, homemade strawberry or peach or whatever my grandma would have. have, we'd make homemade ice cream on Sundays with the family. And I'd go into tobacco houses and they would be listening one particular time. I wrote about it in the book, the Nd 500 is on. And it was just thrilling to me hearing these announcers announced the race. So I go to, years later, I go to a car show in Miami, in Miami Convention Center. And there's a booth there from SCCA, Sports Car Club of America. And they got all these little brochures and all that thing.

And I pick one out and I take it home. And I end up putting it on my kitchen table. And it's like if it's talking to me every time I walk by. You know, I'm looking at it. You know, call such a number, right? So I picked up, I called, and they told me everything I needed to do to get a competition license. What'd you have to do? First, I had to have a car.

That helps. Where did you find this car? I'm looking in auto traders and magazines to find a particular car that I wanted. I wanted a Porsche 356 speedster. How do you know? Just I like the car. I've been going to some club racing. So you kind of knew about the cars, what type of car you needed.

Yeah, I read magazines. Damn, all right. You're well-versed on it. I'm a kid. Not real-versed. I was just looking. I'm reading, and I like this particular car, 356. I thought it was cool.

I know James Dean had gotten killed in a spider, similar, but not that type of car. And I always thought he was cool. So I said, don't go get me a three, five, six Porsche and go racing in the club level as a hobby. So I found one in Tennessee that was kind of rusted up and beat up, been parked for a while. And ended up, someone went and got it for me and brought it back and rented me, you a little thousand square foot bay warehouse and that was my shop how much did you pay for it i paid seven thousand dollars for the car damn that's caught a bit of money back then back then i thought man i tried to get the guy down but i couldn't all right so um and you go out who's going to go

the racetrack with you you're going to go to your first race who's going my family my whole family really sure yeah and you win your first race i went hell it was unbelievable i to this day when I think back, because I had no idea what I was doing. I had went to Sebring and did some SCCA competition license where they just signed off because I had so many, so much time on the track. They signed off, and next thing I know, I'm in West Palm Beach Speedway, and it's my first race. I had qualified in the back. I didn't qualify real well.

And somehow, I don't know, I was hidden to the front. Yeah. You know, I just, I'm not wishing. like you say, I'm not wishing for any, I'm just driving as hard as I can drive. That's what I was doing. And I ended up winning my very first race I entered in West Palm Beach and having my dad and my mom and my brothers and everybody there. It was so exhilarating. And we had been there all week, barbecuing, you know, we made it a trip.

Made it a trip all weekend and, you know, it was nice. How many cars are we talking about ballpark in this race? In this race, it was probably. Oh, maybe 12, 13 cars. And you're starting in the back? I start in the back, yeah. Man, it's almost like I want to, there's an explanation out there on how he could win that race,

but yet you don't even know it. So you're just like, you just drove it hard and went. I just drove, yeah. Clearly you had natural talent that maybe you didn't even know about at the time, but now are you starting to think I've got a knack for this? Like I have that kind of like unspoken, that intangible. Well, I look at race car drivers as myself, one. and as I progressed,

I didn't look at my self-hound talent. I looked at myself developing skills. That's me. That's my perspective. Because the more I could get seat time and the more I could practice, the more laps I could get, and the more I could get on a skid pad,

learning the car control, the more skills I think I developed. So I look at it as not so much talent, but it's a balance between the time. and the skills that one person develops. Yeah. Are you moving enough marijuana right out of the get? When you first start racing, is this pretty affordable?

Like, at what point do you start thinking, I got to sell more marijuana? Because this is costing a lot more money. Well. Is that right out of the gate? No, that's right. Not right at the gate because amateur racing was a hobby. It was affordable, right? It was affordable.

I do it on my time, whichever weekend that I want to take the family or do something. And now I'm only doing amateur. I'm doing the East Coast. I'm doing Savannah, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina, Texas World Speedway back then. They had a Texas World Speedway. I do Daytona and I would do Seabring and West Palm Beach. But I wouldn't do them on a, just whenever I could afford it and had to,

everything was ready, I'd go do these races. And I'll tell you, something about the camaraderie. you get with club racing, that is really cool because you're barbecuing and in all the racing that I've been involved. If you need a pod, even in the Indy car racing, if you need a part or you need something, you've got guys ready to give you motors. I mean, you know that. So the camaraderie was really nice.

And your question was about the money. I started realizing when I got into GTP. racing, grand touring prototypes for EMSA International Motor Sanction Association. I started racing that. In 1982, I was at Daytona. I got a ride with a Ferrari team. And that guy ended up asking me to go to Lamonts. So I want to ask you, when you look at your career, right, you started racing in 70,

you started racing in 80. Well, started seriously doing the club racing in 80. Yeah. Right. When did you start racing like, when did you run your first competitive race? In a GTP car? The very first win with your family. What year was that?

That was probably 1980. I had been getting my license in 79. Yeah. So when you look back at your career, do you think you might have went up a little bit too fast? Why did you not like run in the same class a little bit longer where it was affordable? Why did you keep, why did you go? You're like, won this. Indiepso champion.

One this, trying to move up. One this. Now, 1984, M's the champion. I mean, what made you so eager to, like, keep progressing so fast? Yeah. I just wanted to better myself, I guess. And the opportunity, when I was at Daytona in 1982, I had already, I had won the southeastern regional championship, which is the amateur e-production class. and I thought it was just I just threw it out there to this guy that was in the garage at the Ferrari team

because Janet Guthrie was getting sick and he told me man one of the drivers is getting sick I've been hanging out at the garage all day and I said oh yeah I said well go tell the owner that you know someone that can drive I'll replace her

I didn't think nothing was going to happen for real I just was telling him hey go tell him he comes back and with the owner and introduce me to him. It was a really unique guy named Preston Hinn, just a character himself. Got a cowboy hat on. I mean, you don't see people wearing, you do it with Richard Petty. He got a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, and he talks to me. I tell him what I've done with the

Porsche. He looks at me, he says, go get your helmet and suit on, come back, I'm going to give you four laps, and he gives me four laps. And his drivers was a guy named Bob Wallach. Okay. Real well-renowned factory driver, Porsche factory driver, and a German driver named Edgar Dorwin. And these are in the sports car clubs are the icons of motor racing. I've never driven a Ferrari in my life.

I've never even sit in one. So I go in, they fit me. They fit me with the bags where they pour in the chemicals, and they fit me in the seat. And I go out, but I've never driven a car with like a, In the Ferrari, they got the little H-box, little box, the gear shifter. Shifter, yeah. Shifter, but the shifter's got like a pattern with a little slight.

It's very narrow? It's got a little, like a metal gate there. Okay. Right. I understand. Right. It's not free-floing. Yeah.

You had to put it in that slot. Yeah. So I've never seen that before. I'm going, oh, okay, this is different. So I go out and do the four laps. not sure where I was at with as far as comparing to any of the other drivers. And when I come in, the guy's sitting there with a clipboard. And he shows me my time as I'm getting out.

The owner's standing behind the wall. And I'm like one second off of the guy, the ace number one driver. So he ends up telling me I got a ride. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah, I was excited. Yeah. And so this is at Daytona.

That's at Daytona. And so you run the race? Wond the race. You won it? No, no, I didn't win it. I ran it. So you ran a lot of laps in the car? We ran for about 18 hours.

And that was any solid enough to invite you to come with them to run Lamont? Yeah, but I didn't think he was going to ever ask me back because I was in the car when the gearbox let go. And I ended up coasting in off of the end bank, came into the pits. I'm getting out. And Bob Wallach, the French guy, is he, he, he, he, he. He's bad-mouthed me that I ran the car off the track, and I didn't. And it didn't go over too well. I'm thinking he's accusing me of breaking the car, but I didn't.

And I had told the other driver that when I got out last, hey, be careful the gearbox. It's shifting hard. So a few months go by, and I get a call at my shop, asked me if I want to go to LaMont's. That guy, the team. The team owner. Yeah. So are you putting any money in that deal? I put $5,000 into the Feroi deal.

Really? Yeah. To run Daytona? To run Daytona? Yep. And so he called you back and asked me if you wanted to go to LaMont. Did you go? Yes, sir.

So you went to LaMont, and you started, you raced in LaMont. We raced in LeMonts, yes. How did that experience ago? That experience, we, was quite a story. It's in the book. I was supposed to drive with a guy named John Paul Jr. Yes. And that's my buddy.

John Paul, him and his father, I got to know through racing. and Junior I just absolutely love. He was a good guy. May he rest in peace. And I was supposed to drive with Junior. We flew over on the Concord. And John Paul Sr. didn't tell us until we got there

that Junior's not showing up and that he was going to take Junior's place. Well, that didn't go over good with the team owner. And he told him, you're not driving his car. And so we're staying at this, This is what blew my mind. We all rented cars and left outside of Perth, about 80 miles, he's Lamont.

And we pull up into, I don't know what, I'm just following the rental cars. And we pull up to a, they call it a chateau. But it looks like a castle. It's 56 bidrooms, and it's all for the Ferrari team. Wow. And that's what I said. Dale, I said, I told my wife, wow. Was she there?

Yeah, sure. I brought her, I brought my brother. Hell yeah. That's amazing. I've never been in LaMond. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It's busy. Yeah. And so we're at this big chateau, 56 bedroom. And when we pull into this big circular driveway, all gravel, all the maids and the butlers come out and all in white. And they're all sitting there. And it's like they're in unison around lined up. I'm going, wow, this is racing. I want some of it.

So John Paul, Sr. and Jr., explain who they are. So John Paul, Sr. junior are racing champions. They had won quite a few championships and races. I think they were from Georgia originally. I might be mistaken there, I'm not sure. But I had met John Paul in 1980 at the SCCA National Championships at Rhode Atlanta. And had a little run in with him.

On the track? No, outside my motorhome. What happened? I'm out there. I like motorcycles, so I'm doing willies on a three-wheeler. Good heavens. Right near my motorhome. As I sat down my motorhome, a guy comes out for his motorhome and stops.

And he says, see all those cars, he's got former Ford. John Paul Jr. was racing former Ford in SCCA where I was doing e-production. Right, it's 1980. Okay. He said, see all that gear over there? You hit anything? I'm hitting you. Well, my brother heard him say that.

Well, my brother's ex-Vietnam veteran, he don't take no shit. So he come right over and bowed up on John Paul Senior. And so Senior ran into his motorhome. What? He went into his motorhome and shut the door. Because now my crew, they're outside thick. Yeah.

Telling him, come on out. This escalated quickly. It escalated like this. And I'm telling them, guys, we're here for racing. We're not here to fight nobody. Cut this shit out. All right? I mean, and so John Paul Jr. comes out and introduces himself.

I've never met him. And we shook hands. I said, look, man, I'm here to race, man. I ain't here to hear all this bull shit. And so all the team, we settled down, and we got about doing what we wanted to do, race. So John Paul, John Paul Sr. Some pretty interesting characters.

Yeah, they, the senior was a smuggler like I was. He was doing loads on showments. Did you know that? I had a suspicion. Okay. I didn't know. Is it done anything with him?

Right. So is it coincidence, it's just coincidence that, like, at that time of, at that time, so in this, in the early 80s, You had the Winnington's, John Paul, Senior, and Jr., you, who else we don't know? I know. Is it just a coincidence? Because that was just what was happening at that time, that it was so prevalent?

So, my opinion, there are no coincidences. That's just my thought, all right? There's no coincidences. I ended up from that meeting of John Paul Sr., who we butted heads almost, another little short story. I'm in Daytona. That was 1980 when I met John Paul Senior. So in 1982, I get a ride with the Ferrari team. And we DNFed.

We didn't finish. So after it was all over, we packing up, I go to the owner's motorhome. And back then, a little bit of prevalent cocaine. So we started partying. He said, and we're talking, and the person, that won the race was John Paul Sr. He won the 24 hours of Daytona that year. So we're talking something, and I'm telling him, yeah,

tell him the story. I just told you about my running with the winner. He just won 24 hours of Daytona. So we're talking in a few minutes go by. He says, hang on right here. I'll be back. I got somebody I want you to meet. So he leaves the motor home.

I'm sitting there. Here he comes. The door opens, and he brings in John Paul Sr. He just won. He just won. one, yeah. So I stand up because now I haven't talked to him since we almost bought in Rhode Atlanta, which the Wittington's owned.

Okay, yeah, yeah. They had bought that. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Which is a whole other story. That's right. We'll get into the Wittings. So there's John Paul Sr.

Now we become friends. And later on, when I go to prison, I'm in Leavenworth, Kansas. And who comes to prison? He comes in, John Paul Sr. So I spent a couple of years with him walking the yard every day. We went through a riot together. Damn, what? On the yard.

So, you know, it's nice to have someone that you could actually, you knew, and you know that your bro got you back. Because when stuff goes down, it ain't pretty. And so just so happened, there was a riot at Leavenworth on July, the 5th, 1991, and Senior and I was out on the rec yard. It all got locked down, a lot of beat downs, a lot of fighting, a lot of, just drama. So... How long did this last? It lasts until about 2 o'clock in the morning, until we was outside. We were supposed to be in by 8 o'clock at night in our sales. So they lock, so basically they

locked you in the yard. They locked us in, they locked us, the people that was in the yard, in the yard. you there. Yeah. And they can't until, and this is out of control. It's out of control. They take over the auditorium, which is a huge auditorium. It probably seats a thousand people. Huge auditorium.

They were showing a movie, Silence of the Lambs, that night for the holiday weekend. So the inmates took over the auditorium in the theater, and they took over the kitchen, and they took over the wreck yard. And so you're in the yard, trap. Trap. Were you in danger? No, I didn't think I had any enemies there. Usually the people that are in danger are people that has got something going on with a click or a group or a gang.

And I'm independent. I'm not getting affiliated or anything. I'm not well versed on prison riots, so I'm asking dumb questions here. But do you have any inclination that it's going to start? Do you have an idea that a riot is about to happen? It spun off like this. What happened is somebody. killed a guy in the main corridor.

He had stabbed him to death at the lieutenant's office. I didn't know that. I'm out on the yard. But some of these gangs knew this. So I'm getting ready to go in. They just blew the big horn. Time to go in. In Leavenworth, when the sun gets, it's a 40-foot wall.

And when the sun gets below that wall, it's time to go in. Because the shadows and stuff like that. Yeah, you just go in. That's when they have yard recall. So they blew rod recall, and that's when they killed the guy in the main corridor. And a whole bunch of guys, as I was starting to leave, a bunch of guys ran by me with knives. And back then we had weights.

Barbells, arm curl bells, they're using them as weapons. And they're trying to get out to go to the main prison. And they end up beating down a guard. And when they beat the guard down, that's when all hell broke loose, because now they did not only kill the guy in there, but they're putting their hands on a guard. So now I get back and I see John Paul Sr. And him and I, they had a little put-putt-putt golf course there.

So we went and grabbed a couple clubs and got up on top of the bleachers. We'd get in high ground. And we got each other's back. Because now there's people fighting around the soccer field. They're breaking into the industry where the print factory is and setting fires. They're breaking into the kitchen.

I see smoke coming up from the kitchen. We don't know, but we assume something's happening because there's smoke coming from the roof of the big prison. They don't took over the kitchen, it looks like. And we didn't know all the chaos that's going on inside with the prisoners. Holy-hires outside. I imagine 27 years in prison you're going to experience some things. Oh, bro, I got stories that just, it's unfortunately a lot of sad stories.

seeing people get hurt and killed, it's not a good thing. Where were we before we got to prison? I don't know. He's talking to John Paul. That's right. Post-winning the 24 hours. So I'm in the motorhome with John Paul, senior, and the owner of the Ferrari team. And we become good friends.

And that was amazing how we were combatant almost in 1980. But here it is in 82. Everything's forgotten. And we're good now. And so you go to LaMont, you race in LaMont, I mean, this is why your, this is why your career had such a rapid ascension is because you're getting these opportunities. You know, these opportunities are just coming quickly and you're taking them. Yeah. So once you go to LaMont, you're now like, hey man, I'm going, I'm going on top.

I'm going to race now. I'm going to the top. So I come back to the States and a couple of my friends own race teams. the Wittington's, a guy named Marty Hines, and some other people that I know that are, because I'm at the track. When you get to the track, you end up meeting people. So I'm getting to know the drivers, the team owners and stuff,

and I'm always asking, hey, you know, plug me in, man, let me go. And I'm getting rides with other teams. Having some success, third place in mallsport, six hours of mallsport. A lot of DNF, though. Breaking parts. Breaking parts. Driving other people's stuff. Driving other people's stuff.

Because, as you know, if you're not magnafluxing it, you're not replacing stuff that's new. From gears to whatever it is, you're going to have stress somewhere. So let's just say it's, you know, 19802, 83, what is your smuggling operation at this time? And when I was a teenager, I started bringing in loads for other smugglers. So you went out on boats. To the Bahamas? To the Bahamas. Yeah, yeah, cigarettes and stuff.

So Ballou told us, he said the first trip he ever went on, the guy said, I just need somebody to go on the ride to count the bells. When it goes to the dock, count the bells. And that was his only job. They were like six or seven guys on the boat. And he said he went, and he was so angry by how unprofessional the whole thing was and how easily they could have got busted that he decided he was never going to do that again, that if he ever did it, he's going to run the whole while.

He's going to be the guy in charge. So you got cigarette boats. I bought my first cigarette boat, 27 foot sport, Magnum. Strictly to smug. No. Nope. I bought it for... Partying.

Yes. I bought it just to go jump waves. I like to jump waves. That gets your adrenaline. When you're jumping an 8 foot, six foot wave, and you're up in there, and then you throttle it, coming back down, it's badass. So how did you end up getting up? to where you were going to make a run with the boat?

So an opportunity came that someone asked me if I would lease them the boat or rent them the boat to let them use to run a load of weed in. Did you feel comfortable with that? I didn't know. I said, no, I'm not letting you use my boat. Are you nuts? And he says, well, maybe we can work something out. So I come to an idea that if you want to give me 30% of what I bring in, I'll take.

it and that's what we worked out 30% you were going to go get it I'll go get it I'll go unload it and bring it into your house and just give me 30% that's low and I'll sell it but I sell it too if you want me to so I get to sell it and I get 30% of what so if I bring in a thousand pounds I'll get 300 pounds nice so that was my first load at 19 19 years old 19 years old were you scared I think I was more excited and coming in at nighttime with a boat full of weed. It was adrenaline, excited, and you feel like you're king calm. Look, you feel like you're invincible.

Right. And so. When you went down to the Bahamas, did you know all your connections? And was that all pretty straightforward? Do you feel pretty organized? Yeah. When I was doing that, I was offloading for other smugglers. So I wasn't going to meet nobody but a ship.

Oh, so you go out, you didn't go. That's not my stuff. You didn't drive to land, and you didn't take the boat down to the Bahamas and beach and then, you know, load up and then, or dock. No, I just left Fort Lauderdale. You left Fort Lauderdale, met a shit. Yeah. So you were meeting halfway or something. Well, Fort Lauderdale and Bimini is only 50 miles.

Okay. So you go to Bimini, refuel, top your tanks off, and then you go out into the Gulfstream or whatever you're supposed to meet, get on the radio, and start calling a code. You hook up with the mother's show. You meet them, you unload, and it's at nighttime, and you shoot back to Fort Lauderdale or Miami, wherever you're coming in, all the keys. Empty? Full. Full. Full.

Okay. And that's how it's done. How do you all float it? That year, my first time is we had a house on a canal, and I just, we drove up to, we motored up to the house and unloaded and put it in the house. Right there, yeah. Yeah. And van's come and get it. Then it's done.

And you said that's a 50-mile run? Yeah. One way? Yeah. How long does that take you to actually drive it, though? Well, it depends. The first time I went, we had calm seas. Okay.

So it was like, oh, this is easy. Right, yeah. You think about that. The next time I went, it wasn't so easy because it was real rough seas. And it's a whole other world. A whole other world. I've had stuff where I've gotten called in tropical depressions like hurricanes, and they develop sometimes before you can get yourself loaded,

and now you're trapped because you can't cross the Gulfstream. The waves are 20 feet big. So you get yourself in some precarious situations. Like an hour? Does it take a – It takes longer than an hour. Longer than an hour. Okay.

So after doing this – Fascinating. So yeah, it is. So after doing this a little while, are you aware of how many other people are doing this? the same thing you're doing? Sure, because I'm selling a lot of other smugglers weed now. Now, my business is growing. I've gotten, I went from one stash house to three. And I've got three or four smugglers that's giving me weed. Hey, I got 10,000 pounds here. Can you

sell it? Yeah, kind of price. Give me a good price. So now I'm selling other people's weed and asking to help them offload. Is it, is, it, it just seems like a lot of weed. Like, is there, Is the demand just out through the roof? Yes. Demand has always been there. And look, I started smoking. I've been smoking weed for 53 years. I was smoking before I even knew anything about it being medicine.

But now they find out this plant helps post-traumatic stress disorder, helps with anxiety. I've got six friends that are in remission of cancer right now due to RSO, Rick Simpson Oil, pure oil that they take instead of chemo. They have six friends that are in remission right now from cancer. So it helps cancer, helps multiple sclerosis. It helps with seizures. This plant heals in a multitude of ways. So through anxiety, depression, or anything like that,

if you find the right strain that works for you, it works. For real so, that's why the demand is there. and it's been there for ages. They've been, this plant has been being used for thousands of years. The Egyptians used to burn nine pounds a day. Like, you know how they burn incense? The Egyptians used to burn it just nine pounds in the, this is thousands of years ago.

So the demand has always been there. Okay. So how many boats did you have at the peak? Before we ever went barging. How many boats, cigarette boats, you know, bow riders or cabin boats? Yeah. So I had a 28 foot, 27 foot magnum, 28 cigarette, 36 cigarette, A 32 C-ray, 68-foot trawler. Good heavens.

You had a Navy. And then I got into the tugboats and barges. Yeah. So in the Netflix series, we get to know Alan and Charlie. I just talked to Alan this morning. Really? How's Alan doing? Alan is doing good.

He is doing ex-ex-ex-ex. exceptionally good. He's like a manager at a graphic design spot that does good stuff. They do cool graphic designs for big traction trailers and car. They do race cars. They're down in near West Palm Beach. Okay. Take a second. Tell us exactly who he is and where you met him. Because like if you haven't watched the Netflix special like we have, we don't know who Alan is. So Alan is a co-defendant that a friend of mine since I was 14 years old. I actually have a lot of friends that were in my life all my life. Still there today.

Still there today. It's just how I roll. And so Alan was a childhood friend from 14, and at 15, him and I hitchhike to Canada. My dad wanted me to cut my hair. My dad was like a little, not a hard ass, but, you know, he grew up in the country. All that long hair stuff? He went for him. Dude.

He won't on that time. So I'm 15 He wanted me to cut my hair I'm a 15 year old Not wanting to cut my hair and smoke weed So I took off to Canada Hitchhike Imagine doing that today

Yeah no way No way You're kidding me So my brothers had told him Hey he's going to his grandma's house First in Virginia That's what I told my brothers To tell my dad and my mom

That I'm going to grandmas So as I did, I showed up at Grandma's. That's the first spot I went. And we stayed three or four days, and they're begging me to come home. They're going to give me a plane ticket. But now I got my mind set. Going to Canada. I'm going to Canada.

And it was the year that they had the Woodstock Festival. It was like 1969. So Alan's been a friend for a long time. Alan's been a friend. So Alan caught a case with me. He ended up being an offloader for me. He worked when I would bring loads in. He was one of the many people.

that was on a shift of offloading the bells. And when all the things went down, Alan stood up. He stood up. Yep. Yep. Yeah. He was facing 15 years. And he ended up serving one third of his time.

He served five years. Yeah. And he's still my buddy today. Yes. You see him how often? I see him maybe once a month or two. Yeah. How close?

How far part of you all? He lives in Lake Worth. I live in Davy, and we're probably, about an hour away from each other. And the other fellow that we know in the documentary or that I know is Charlie. Right. So he's the banker.

Yes, he was my bookkeeper. Yeah. And so at the end of the show, so you and how did y'all meet? I forget. He started having connections for me to sell marijuana at the community college. Yep.

And he owned the home where you could stash, right? He had to. He would lease homes for me. He would lease homes for me. He was real clean cut. He was the guy that could be the front. Yes, exactly, under different names. So he would lease stash houses for me.

And then he ended up being kind of the accountant, the bookkeeper. And he was unfortunately the way that y'all went down. And we'll talk about that. But in the end of the show, so Charlie's the guy that was the state's witness. He was one of the main witnesses against me. Right. Yes. And so in the end of the,

the Netflix show, you and Charlie, meet again? Yep. Was that really? We had dinner together. That was the first time you'd seen him. That's the first time I've seen him. Yep. Wow.

So you had, he was one of, he was the one guy, the top guy that put you away. And you, as you said, went through some forgiveness. Went through, took me, look, it took me 18 years to come to a point. want to understand. I found that so phenomenal. You and him would go sit in the same room. And break bread. And break bread.

Was that orchestrated because of the Netflix documentary or did you want to do that on your own? No. Well, the Netflix director and producer, they've been in touch with him because of that. And they asked me how I felt about, you know, talking to Charles. I said, I have no problem. I, you know, look, I want everybody to do good. And I want everybody to have a happy life. I don't wish bad against no one.

So I said, I'm good with him, man. So we talked. I said, yeah, I'm all about it. You know, so let's have dinner. So you did. So we did. Alan doesn't feel the same way, though. No, and I still talk to him about that because...

You want Alan to forgive? Look, forgiveness is the cornerstone, for real, of... living a life of abundance and joy of because when we don't forgive, we're actually stymying ourselves. Because now it's like you're hymning up yourself because you can get burtoned down with stuff that you don't even realize is happening to you. Because maybe you've got an attitude or you got a resentment towards somebody. So these resentments and stuff, you don't need to live with. don't. Right. So you've talked to Alan about that? Yeah, I've talked to him. What's Alan say? He's still mad. I can tell Alan's not going to be easy.

He ain't bending right now. He doesn't seem to mince words. Like he just puts it all out there. He's not happy with Chuck. And it didn't look like he was going to turn that corner anytime. No, he's not right now. And you know what? I haven't given up on him. I wouldn't either. So. I wouldn't either. You get into the prototypes, racing in Emsa. Yeah. Love the prototypes. Right.

And you, who is your co-driver? Bill Winnington. He's got a brother. May you rest in peace. He just died last year. He did. Bill did? Yeah.

Yeah. He crashed to Merlin doing, he was doing, he took a guy up for, he spent the last three days with me before he passed away. Oh, he hadn't seen him in 30 years. He came. We spent three days together. he went back to Arizona and they used to race airplanes and so one of his buddies had terminal cancer and he was going to take him up for a flight and he was in a Maryland doing figure 8s running about 300 mile now doing figure 8s but that's not why he crashed he had done

finished the figure 8s and loops and was hidden back to Scottsdale to the airport and so we don't know what happened. He had done all the stunts. He was done. Yeah, he was headed back. He was hid the back. Yeah. So we don't know why, why what happened. Oh, man. Yeah. So your race, going back to your question, you, you're starting to race with those guys, the Whittington's. Yeah. Well, when you partner up with him, do you know about his past or his history, what he's doing you do? We got some, we got some business together. Y'all are working together. Occasionally. Okay. Yeah. And so, which is convenient. You're going to go racing.

You're making, you know, you're kind of... And he had a stable of 935 Porsches. So, you know, I drove for them a couple of times. And those 935s, if you've never driven one, you've got to get in one. They're raw. Ain't no anti-lock brakes. Ain't no car control. It's badass.

Right. They're awesome. And so you and him partner up and build a team. And when you started Blue Thunder, what did you call it Blue Thunder? Yeah. What did you call it Blue Thunder for? Well, I had ordered a Tracton trailer, and it hadn't arrived yet, and we've got a race coming up, and my crew chief says he can get me a tractor and trail until hours come in.

And the driver showed up at my shop, and on front of his tractor and trailer with a tag that said Blue Thunder. And I talk into the owner and the driver, and I said, you know, out of respect, I'm going to name my team Blue Thunder. and that's how we name Blue Thunder. So Blue Thunder Racing is the team that you started and won the 1984 Emsa Championship with. Yeah. And your partner and driver is Don Whittington. Bill.

Bill. Sorry. Bill's older brother. Got you. You own the team 100% outright? I own the team. Out right. Yeah.

Bill was just a driver. Why did you want to do two cars? Is that just a common thing? Everybody, every team had two cars? You wanted to spend twice as much money? No, not every car I had. not every car, every team had two cars. But in some of these races, like, they're sprint races, like Laguna Saker, you get it done

in an hour. If I only got one car, only one of us is going to drive. Yeah. So I bought a car for Bill and said, hey, you know, that way we're both going to be racing. Racing. Yeah. And you're, at the start of the season, are you aware right out of the gate that you got a shot at win in the championship when did that develop no i had no idea yeah no uh i missed my first

couple of races i had a load coming in so you missed part of the season yeah and you weren't going to be there you didn't have other people that could do this i missed i missed Atlanta uh missed Atlanta uh bill took uh i think bill took second his brother won it uh in 1984 i had raced in um seabring we took second place in seabring uh that was my premier of the racetrack of the the Blue Thunder team. Why couldn't someone else handle that? Handle what? The load.

Because I guess that's just how I was rolling at the time. And a lot of times when you get in these smuggling operations, no one wants to deal with anybody else. Good point. They know you and they trust you. And I tried to do that later on. They go, no, look, we don't know him. We don't want to talk to him.

We don't want to meet him. So the thing about doing that kind of activity, you have to compartmentalize a lot of operations because you don't want everybody from this part of the operation to know everybody from this part of the operation because if something went down, they can only say what they know. They don't know who's involved with the offloading. They don't know who's involved with the warehouses. They don't know, you know, you compartmentalize. So Ballou is doing runs on boats similar to the boats that you had to Florida.

They're racing. Do you, do you, does that, do you, do you, do you, do you, are you hearing any of those names back then? I'm hearing those names. You are hearing. I've never met Curry. Right. But you're hearing. I'm hearing those.

All the people that are in that world kind of are hearing. Sure. And so his operation, uh, ran their product. all, I mean, his operation started in Florida, got the, you know, and was working, getting loads from Bahamas, but he his operation ran all the way up to the northeast. Yeah. Racers up there and the modifies and all that. I mean, there were this whole traffic or network of people involved in motorsports, even here in Charlotte, we're moving their product all up down the East Coast. Are you only aware of what you're doing in your operation, or do you know where all of this product goes once you get it? Once you get into warehouse, yeah, and you're selling, you know where all that happens? So from my deal is my distributors, and I only had about four distributors. I tried to keep it three to four.

I didn't want a lot of distributors. And they would tell me, well, I'm shipping a tractor and trailer to Michigan. I'm sending a tractor trailer to Kentucky. Or I'm sending it to South Dakota, or whatever they're sending it, they would tell me sometimes. And if I asked, they would tell me. But once I would give a load to somebody, it's their business where they send it. I really don't care. What do you care?

I don't care. But if they gave me the information, that's fine. So what is the concern for you? I guess this goes back to my very first question. At this time in your life, right? So I'm pretty, I'm high anxiety, like just in general as a person, right? And if I had your history, if I had chose that life, I would be, I'd be nervous to be, I'd be looking over my shoulder all day, every day, right?

Where are you in terms of being comfortable with that? I'm sure when you were in the middle of it, you were worried about, people probably were worried about you talking, you, what you might, you know, names you might say or, or connections that you have. but now you're able to basically kind of live your life on your terms. I love it. Right. I mean, how. Every minute of my life.

Right, but I would assume that once you choose to be in that world, you're never, you have, you never can be free of it and the implications and the dangers, right, and the connections. And it's such a good feeling to be free of it. How old over that? You never got anxiety over that? I'm sure I did. At what point, though, do you go, you know what, I no longer have to worry about any of the repercussions from being part of that, following you, right, forward into this new life, right? Was it because you did the time?

Was it because you prove that you, you know, you're going to take all of the secrets to your grave? I mean, help me kind of understand. I felt the same way with Gary, right? You know, Gary is able to go on and live his life and carry on, and he's fine. He's happy and he's, he feels fortunate. It's such a dangerous world that a lot of people never escape. Yeah. How are you able, how are you able to escape it?

Well, one thing is I didn't escape it. They locked my ass out for 27 years. So once I got pinched, And maybe there was some relief. You know what? This is over. But now I've got to just deal with the legal issues and move on. Yeah.

And with that said, going to the Supreme Court four times, trying to get myself out, going through massive amounts of motions, legal motions. One of my big arguments was that it was cruel and unusual punishment to lock up anybody for a life sentence for marijuana. And I still say that today, that it should never be scheduled a scheduled one narcotic. And that's what I was charged with,

was importing and distributing a scheduled one narcotic. I don't look at it that way. I look at it a little different. This plant's a healing plant, and no one should be given a life sentence for this plant. So, but to get away from that lifestyle, and now be out here, I realize the many bad choices that I did make because I was doing, as I spoke earlier in this interview,

I spoke about outside priorities and our inner priorities, and it's a true statement. When we put our attention on our outside priorities, and we might be chasing our dreams, and they all might be coming true, but are we neglecting what's really important. But you're, so when you get it, so what makes you decide to, how do you make a decision to get a barge? Like where, that's not a, that's not next step from, from trawler.

So that decision was pretty easy to make because, I'm going to tell you, I met one of my, one of my distributors from New York. He says, I got somebody I want you to meet. I said, yeah, who's that? He says, you got to meet Gene. He owns a tugboat and salvage operation in Santa Domingo, and I think you guys would be good friends. I said, all right, so I meet Gene, and he brings his partner with him. Well, they got these barges and they got these tugboats,

but mainly we're talking about tugboats first. We didn't talk about the barge. They've got these tugboats, 150-foot tugboats. And they want to know if I want to use them. to bring in loads of weed. So I said, yeah, damn Skippy, you're talking to the right guy. So we initially used the tugboat to bring in 35,000 pounds up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Okay.

I know very little about tugboats, but what I know, they don't go fast. They don't go fast. And I can't really envision them, you know, doing a drug run. Maybe that's why that's the perfect vehicle. That's it? Yeah. But isn't it suspicious when a tugboat is going 50 miles? offshore? He's just doing, he's probably pushing a barge somewhere, right?

Tugboats in New Orleans, they're loaded up with them in New Orleans. But you're right. The tugboats back then wasn't so suspicious as a trawler, a trip boat. They was more suspicious. Got it. So we ran my, their first tugboat that we brought in, I brought up the Hudson River up to Bridgeport, Connecticut. So let, one quick question. So from, from the first boat, from the first boat, From the first run you made with your cigarette boat or whatever it was that you took down there to the tugboat, had you ever been busted? Had you ever been even close to getting caught? You had no worries.

No, I got arrested when I was 15 years old with an ounce of weed. I was at the beach. So at this point, by time you're in tugboats, you had evaded or never been under. You weren't even worried about you. You're like, man, I haven't gotten any problems. Had any distributors or any people that you were familiar with been busted? Because wasn't it true that the government was ratcheting up the pressure on this? Yes, and I had other smuggler friends who did get pinched with thousands of pounds of weed on that vessels.

When those things would happen, would you like... I'd be concerned. Just my last run. One more time. One more run. One more. I'd be concerned that what, you know, because this guy might know a little bit about, my business.

Yeah. And back then, oh, they was given out like three years, five years. And they wasn't given out these long, lengthy death sentences. So people would go in and they'd be gone for two years or three years and they'd be right back out. Right back in the game. Right back in the game. Okay.

And I know we're trying to parallel with the racing because I think that it's fair to say with you starting Blue Thunder Racing, which Dale would have. asking about and you pairing up with the Whittingtons who are also in this game you've basically fund that operation with smuggling right totally that is mind-blowing 100% from weed money so so I guess that's reason why well that's one of the reasons why you're okay to miss a race to handle a load because that is your financial source to do the racing to begin with right about 50 million dollars worth of weed coming in right on one boat on one boat on one boat How much of that $50 million is technically yours in the end?

About 15. 15. God, my. And how often would one of these $50 million loads happen? Well, after my first one, I did in 1983, I did four loads in one year. Not all big loads. It was $15,000, $35,000, and $110,000. After that, I just stopped and said one a year.

I didn't need to do all there. You're just going to do one a year. One a year. That was enough. And you weren't doing any more of the little boats, right? No. Right? So you just got this one barge.

There's one barge. Do you have, do you own, it's a outfitted barge. My co-defendant Jean owned it. All right. And the boat was fitted to be able to put all this in the bottom. Well, that was a mistake, which I don't know where I came from. But. Not true.

A mistake in the, in the Netflix piece? Yeah, I told them how I did. it, it's not the bottom, it's the sides. Okay. The barge has ballast all the way down the sides, not on the bottom. Okay. Right. So you put your manifest on the bottom.

So what we did is down the sides of this long barge, we weld at three quarter inch steel as a platelet. Because that, they pump water into the sides of the barge to create balance. So when the barge is empty, if they pump water, it'll ride through the wave. nice. Whereas if it's loaded and they got millions of pounds of weight, they'll pump all the water out.

So we took the barge and welded three quarter inch steel down the sides and made compartments. And then when we got to Columbia, we'd cut big manholes out of the side of the barge, put the weed in it, welded all back, pump water into the ballast.

So when we get to where we're going, they see water. They see water. And I've even had customs pump water out and want to drill a hole and stuff. Customs did. Customs did. They wanted to drill a hole in. Oh, my last load, yeah.

And did they find anything? No, they broke two drill bits. They were drilling. They pumped the water out. They got down and got the kit and got the, this is, I'm being reported all this from the broker service that we used. I'm not there. I'm not there. This barge came in at San Francisco. And so this is happening and you're not there. And you're how, this ain't like,

you've got a damn cell phone where you can get like right there right then. You're not getting information immediately. You're probably sitting there going, holy shit. I'd tell you where I was out. I was over near the wharfs in San Francisco with binoculars looking at my bar. Oh my God. You know, I'm going, where the hell? It's been there for two days, man. Oh my God. All right. What happened is the Coast Guard come in. They take everybody's passport and tell them they can't come ashore yet. But then they come back and they got a little crew with a kit and it's got drills in it.

And they had pumped the water out and they go to drill to see what's below because they pumped all the water out. And I guess they wasn't putting like oil and liquid on the drill bit and it got hot. Yeah. I think it was a rookie Coast Guard. It must have been. And the second drill he pulls out and it breaks. They leave.

They don't come back. the next day they come back with everybody's passport and tell him welcome ashore. Man, Mike, that's pretty incredible to be able to talk to Randy. I've seen a lot of things that he's done in the past and know a lot about his stories, so it was awesome to be able to, you know, you've got questions. Some of the stories that you hear just provide more questions than answers, and so have a chance to really sit down with him and talk to him about that. And the story is so deep.

There is so many layers to it. I think that we, you know, we've got a lot. split this into two parts. Yeah, so let's do that because we want to make sure that this whole thing gets told right. He gave us a lot of vivid detail about his drug smuggling operation and how he used it to fund his race team.

I can promise you this part two coming up is just as exciting and just as crazy as part one. All right. Randy Lanier, Part 1 is in the books. Part 2 coming soon. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. and welcome to the Ask Jr. portion of the show. I'm just trying to send a Instagram story

you out. Alex has got your questions that you sent into Exfinity Racing on Twitter. I'm excited to get to them today. Yep. Our first question is from Floyd Mead. Dale, besides auto racing, what sport would you like to commentate for?

I don't think any. Really? Yeah. You know, I'll be honest with you, man. I love going and doing the extra things that NBC sends me to. And it's a great experience, going to the Olympics and all those things. but to be a full-time broadcaster in a different sport,

I don't really, I don't want to pursue that. I really don't. So, I mean, I love being in the booth for the races. That's where I belong. That's where I feel at home. And that's what I know. And so that's where my heart's at, man. That's it.

Yeah. Our next one's from Adam Peterson. with the huge crowd last weekend at Iowa for the IndyCar race, do you think NASCAR should return to that track? At IRP? At Iowa. Iowa. Sorry, Iowa.

For the Indycar race? Yeah, it was about, you know, Tulsa. I don't know. I've never been, so this is, I can't answer this because I've never been to a race there. Never. And so I went out there to test years ago back when we were doing the COT. And it was a long time ago, but I have never been to a race at that track. So I don't know the energy of the vibe.

You know, when you walk into a track, you feel it, right? You feel how cool the place is. And I'm sure it's great. And I know that the drivers love racing there, the multiple grooves that you can run. Watching races there's pretty fun because, you know, there's a lot of different ways to go around the corner and opportunities to pass and so forth. But I don't know. You know, I think I'm curious as to what it would be like and how successful maybe a cup race would be.

And the track, even though some of the dates as far as the top three series, even the dates are kind of coming and going, the track seems to be doing really well. You know, they had a fantastic, you know, kind of pop for the IndyCar series when they visited there and everything HyV did to kind of promote that. And that was pretty impressive. So I would be interested in going out. there and seeing what it felt like go broadcast a race there that kind of be fun to do. Next question's from Ira Gibson. Do you still have the 95 Impala from MTV Cribs?

I sold that and I wish I didn't. But I don't know. I mean how back then that car was cool. I don't know if it'd be cool today. Oh I old 95 in power. Oh yeah. I think it'd be cool. I wish I still had it. That thing had a decal across the bottom across the side of it. So the side had a trim on the door right around midway and below that it had a silver and it just said impala it went all the way down the side of the car i thought that was cool um and uh it was we had 15s in the back deck behind the passenger seats man that thing was loud it was awesome i mean we rode down the road and that thing playing the music far far too loud for our health yeah uh next one's from Ryan Johnson. He says, I've been spending my free time going through your

Xfinity championship years on YouTube. And there's a race at Dover in 1999 that you battled for the lead and the championship with Matt Kenseth. You both got together and wrecked, and Matt didn't seem too happy with you. Do you remember that? Dover. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I mean, it was embarrassing for me because I usually tried, I tried not to make mistakes and especially trying to not make a mistake that it's going to take somebody out. Me and Matt were buds. we'd kind of hang out with each other and go to each other's houses and so forth or whatever. And, yeah, we were definitely in the middle of a close points battle at the time.

At that moment in the year, the battle was pretty, I felt a lot of pressure for Matt in terms of just trying to win a championship. And he had the best car that day. Multiple times had beaten us on restarts and gotten out and led and had a comfortable, he had a car that he was going to win the race. that particular restart we fired off pretty good and we were running side by side with him and I was pushing I was over my head

and driving over my head for a couple corners there but I thought man maybe I'll maybe he'll concede the position and we kind of got I kind of put myself in a bad position coming off of two where my angle wasn't good back slipped around I corrected up into him that sent him into the wall and we both suffered

pretty bad damage there I think I might have gotten offense as well. It hurt us both, but it heard him more in terms, I think I actually finished in front of him in the race. And so I kind of walked out of there. I remember doing a post-race or post-crash interview as well. And I kind of walked out of there thinking, you know, me and Matt had, Matt had a lot of respect from Mark Martin. All types of people in the series were like, man, this guy is good, he's smooth. And I had proven in that moment that I still had to some flaws, right? That, man, you're just not supposed to make those mistakes. And Matt wasn't making those mistakes. So I felt pretty silly, but at the same time, really lucky to have gotten

out of there without losing points to Matt because he was going to definitely win that day. Next one's from Rocket Rick. You said you might go tailgate as a fan at North Wilkesboro. What would be your perfect tailgate in terms of, like, beer, food, and friends? Oh, yeah. Well, I think I have a little sundry. up in the cooler. I, you know, just obviously some sun drop, some high rock vodka, some mixers and some beers. And I always like brots. I was kind of a brock guy for a long time.

Tacos, so ground beef. We had when I was in the late 90s and all the way through the thousands, we ate tacos on Friday and then we did brots on Saturday and then Sunday was just like a simple sandwich because you didn't want to take too many risks before you getting in the car but um every week it was tacos brats tacos brats um and it showed I'm speaking of me personally not you do I'm telling you we ate tacos Friday brats Saturday and I mean tore them up oh man so good with sun drop in the bottles in the glass bottles that's right so um Those are probably my favorites.

But if it's in the evening and you're spending the night or whatever, man, you've got to have some stakes. Some steaks of Worcestershire-Solson. Can anybody say that, Wisheshire Shalston? No, you nailed it. Nailed it. Our last question's from Bugsy. It seems there's video from most NASCAR races in the 80s,

but do you find it odd that there's no video that exists of the 1981 Miller High Life 300 Bush Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway that Gary Balloo won. Yeah, I do. So when Gary was here way, way back when we did his episode, we were all talking about that post show. We're standing right here in this room going, because they're creating a documentary for him, and they're like, man, we'd love to get some footage of that race. And I was like, I have footage of all the races, right?

And I'm thinking, surely I've got it. I'm thinking in my head, I've got that race. And I can't believe that they don't have it because I have it. If I have it, why I can't? It should be easy to find, right? I could probably Google it right now or find it on YouTube. Nope. It doesn't exist.

I swear I've seen footage of that race. Maybe like whether it was race highlights from the local news or something like that. But there is footage of that race that exists. But there is no broadcast of the race that you can find. I definitely don't have it in my catalog. and I think I've got probably 90% of what's out there in terms of any kind of race broadcast from the 60s, 70s, all the way through the 80s and 90s.

And pretty much everything else is on YouTube that would be out there. I don't think there's really much out there, those little Facebook groups and stuff that those guys get together and they trade back and forth and some of the rare races, they don't want them to leak. you know what I mean they want them to stay in those little pockets of the internet that really

really love collecting and cataloging those races so I think everything's out there now I don't think there's anything missing so if it if it exists it was probably be like wSFC race highlights or something like that on six o'clock news now that would probably be it all right we'll see thank you exfinity and exfinity x-5 for everything you do great supporters of our podcast great supporters of NASCAR and everything they do in the Xfinity series I'm a customer and really enjoy the service and hope you guys will check that out as well if you're having trouble or want to improve your service

Xfinity X-Fi is definitely where I'd send you thanks for sending in your questions to add Xfinity Racing on Twitter and we're thrilled we're thrilled to have them as a supporter of our show that's right and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you have not already the DirtyMill Media YouTube channel we appreciate it

All right, everybody, there it is. Awesome episode, 392s in the books. Mike, guess what? What's up? Guess what? I'm going to be doing play-by-play this weekend. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm excited about that.

Just a lot of great stuff to be able to talk about play-by-play this weekend at Michigan. I hope to see everybody there. The sun drop. Cup race, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah, wow. Mike, yes. He's doing cup racing.

He's play-by-play guy. We're going to do. Great announcement with the late-mile stock car. We're going to be racing in North Wiltsboro, I'm excited about that guys. I can't tell you how pumped down about how all that came together. Didn't think it was going to happen.

Here we are. Here we are, but. Bringing it back from 1993. There you go. Man, how many years? What is that? Almost 30. Oh, my God.

Is that right? Yes. That's old, man. That's old. That's old. Or than me. That's right. That's right.

More than people in this room. Oh, my God. Alex, what year were you born? 96. Holy crap. You were well on your way in 96. I don't know about that. But yeah, man.

Well, listen, hey, and tonight when this podcast drops, you'll be at the mod race. I just died inside. What did you say? You'll be at the mod race tonight. Yeah, going to the racetrack. Going to the racetrack this week. Racing's happening at North Wilsonboro. Check the calendar.

Go to northwiltsboro Speedway.com. Get your tickets. There's racing throughout the month. And then the dirt races in October, obviously. But just a lot going on. Thank you, Randy Lanier, for coming all this way to tell your story. Randy's book, Survival of the Fastest, is going to be in stores. It comes out when?

Today, comes out today. Today it comes out, The Fastest. So if you want to know, obviously, more details about his story, just a fascinating guy, survival of the fastest. Thank you, guys. Thank you to Xfinity, Bojangles and Ally, great partners here at Dirtymo Media. and you guys have a great rest of the week. We'll see you soon.

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