The Dale Jr. Download - 4 - Las Vegas

Episode Date: March 11, 2013

Highlights from Dale Jr.'s 7th place finish at Las Vegas, plus news regarding his upcoming Nationwide Series schedule. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is Dale Jr., and you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Dale Jr. finishes seventh in the race yesterday, and the best part is he didn't even wake up in an unmarked van in the middle of Vegas desert. The Dale Jr. Download starts now. I was real happy. For the first shot at that set up, I thought it ran pretty good. I'm ready to hold. And they are home back in North Carolina. As you hear there with Steve LaTart and Dale Jr., T.J. talking there, spotting at the end as Junior beat Martin Truex Jr. to the finish. line. Drag race. It finished seventh yesterday in Las Vegas. And Mike, it's

his best ever start to the season. Not only is his best ever start to the season. It's a first time in his Cup career. He's had three consecutive top ten finishes. Absolutely, man. And the thing about it is I remember at the beginning of last year, we started comparing

that season to 2004 because 2004 was that high water mark. And now we're doing it all over again. Only he's doing it better. His first three race His average finish is 4.6, finished second at Daytona, finished fifth last week at Phoenix, finished seventh this week at Vegas. A great start. He's sitting third in points. Yeah, he is. Ten points back.

Kislauski and Jimmy Johnson have also gotten off to terrific starts so far this year. Now he's going to attract Jr. He is that he absolutely loves. More on Bristol. Breastle coming up in just a little bit. You did say that naturally. You did say Bristol. Well, that's, I mean, I am who I am wearing a cameo hat today.

Let's talk about this car that he had yesterday. Definitely a top 10 car, maybe a top 5 car. In fact, Junior argued that maybe it was a top 5 car after the race. Here's something they talked about during the race. Caution 4, lap 223. Here's Stevie and Jr. talking about the race. What do you need there with the chat? You buddy, what you got?

Just a little bit of help on the left. Yeah, and that seemed to be the big issue Stevie was working with. You know, might want to free it up just a little bit, but Junior was afraid. Don't go too far. Don't go too far. So Junior was sitting there having this internal debate, as you could hear, about what to do with it. But still, a great car in the end of the day.

But he says, it's pretty good, to be honest with you. Almost a driver to say those words during a race. It's like, I'm afraid to say this, but it's pretty good, to be honest with you. And so it was good. This was a top five car all day. They race, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh. He got up to third on this restart. That was incredible.

It was just a good, consistent day. I think Stevie did a lot to make the car better. And, you know, you bring home a top 10. What else can you say? Kane had the best car, I thought. Kenseth had the second best car. And then Johnson, Carl Edwards, Kyle Bush, they all about had the same car with the same car as Dale Jr., I thought.

Theirs wasn't orange. But theirs was not orange and black. I still have sunspots from watching that race yesterday of seeing junior. I mean, I still see them. Yeah, well, like Doug Rice said yesterday, on the national broadcast on the radio. I thought we were watching A.J. Ford out there. I was a little confused.

And pretty cool stuff about Junior on restarts. We saw a lot of bonsai dives to the bottom yesterday. Here's Dale Jr. talking about that. Number five, almost. And it's funny, he said three-wide action. So when he says that, I thought Junior meant, okay, I'm going to try to pull a Kyle Busch here and go down to the apron. No, Junior split the middle and picked up a couple spots.

And he had Kyle Busch behind him, and I think that's what they were anticipating is that, you know, Kyle's going to probably go. down to the apron. I'm going to be here. Just get ready to tell the five, this is going to get a little crazy. Junior had a great restart on that. I mean, who was he passed for fourth?

I can't remember who it was. He picked up a couple spots there. And he passed Jimmy for third. Jimmy ended up getting him back, but it was a great restart. And Junior foretold it. Yeah, he did. Let's talk about his communication. Last week, Marty Smith and I were in here, and we were talking about the communication.

He was just couldn't stop going on and on about the great communication. between Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve LaTart. In fact, here's what Stevie said about Junior's communication. It's been really, really good. It's been real helpful. You've worked through traffic real well. It's been good, man, real good. Mike, how long you've been listening to Dale Jr.

on the scanner now? Ten years. Ten years. Just about every single week you've been listening. Just about. Is the communication ever been better than it is right now from Dale Jr.'s end? No. No, Dale Jr. is giving the communication.

I've never heard him. of communication like this. And I tell you what, we've been looking at the past three races and dissecting these, but it's when you get into the middle of the summer and it's hot and maybe your car's not great. And that's where Stevie really brings it out in you

and he makes you want to tell him about the car. I wish Stevie just was at my house and told me, hey, get out of bed, man. You can get out of bed. Come on, you can do this, man. Get out of bed. All right. And then tell me, all right, now you pour that bowl of cereal.

Do it. Because my day would go so much smoother if I had LaTart in my ear. I love Steve LaTart.com. Mike, let's talk about some of these tweets we get each and every week. We get a lot of good ones. Fan reaction yesterday on Twitter, some good ones here. Mikey Bobby said if Dale Jr. won I was going to Bristol. He didn't, so I save $500 in a sick day.

Well, you know, if that's what you want to be like. We're going to miss you at Thunder Valley. What if Junior wins Bristol, though? Well, then I guess he'll be there. Mikey's not going to feel good. That's going to be a long trip. next week. Right.

Tim, Cartracer 386, somebody that we've known on Twitter for a long time, said, love the consistency, but it's time to take that next step. What does he mean there, Taylor? It means it's time for Junior to be in victory line. You'll me to tell you now that I think Dale Jr. is going to win next week, or you'll wait until later in the podcast. No, I think I want you to tell me now. Okay, because, well, I think I just did.

All right. All right. He is. Brandon Pruitt says this car ain't so bad after all. Now, is it plenty of passing in a great race to the checkered flag. Now, it was a great race to the checker flag up at front. But again, and we talked about it a little bit on Junior's end, the race between Martin Truex Jr. and Junior was incredible.

Yeah. And Truex had the thing sideways coming up to the start finish line. It was really good race, drag racing. And it got Stevie LaTard excited there to you in, too. It did. And, you know, sometimes, I'll say this about Vegas, sometimes when you're watching a NASCAR race, you really can't tell they're going 180, 190 miles an hour.

You know, it looks like they're going 50 or 60 miles an hour on television. Vision. Yesterday, it looked like they were going 500 miles an hour. I mean, they looked like they had rocket ships out there. Yeah. Robert Franklin said, I'm excited about Junior 7th place, but I'm even more excited that finally tomorrow I can buy some Dale Jr. chips. Hey, that's a sponsor plug there. I appreciate that. And lastly, Marcia Penny says, you know, it's a great day when you're third in points

and you didn't get fined $25,000. That's a great point. That's a great point. It's a great day when you don't get fined $25,000. One more thing, Taylor. We're going to keep these tweets coming, but next week we introduce the fan voicemail line. We're going to have a number out there for you to call, for fans to call and leave voicemails for us that we are going to play on the air for the next podcast. People are going to leave me voicemails?

All of us. On my cell phone? Bill Jr., me, you, LaTart. If you've got a thought about the race, whether you're mad, whether you're happy, whatever it is, you let us hear it. And I should remind you now that this podcast is brought to you. by Dale Jr. potato chips. You can order all four flavors and find a retail store locator near you just by going to Dale Jr. Foods.com.

Let's speed dial. Okay, Speed Dial is dedicated to getting the media's reaction to how Dale Jr. is doing on the track and to talking to someone that's close to him that works maybe for JR Motorsports. Let's start with the media. Nate Ryan, Motorsports Reporter USA Today, joins us on the phone.

Nate, Dale Jr.'s best start ever after three races in his entire career, average finish of 4.6, a second, a fifth, and a seventh. What are we to make of this? Yeah, well, first, I appreciate you guys inviting me, Taylor, because I feel somewhat remiss last night being a sports rest, teams in NASCAR. Dale Jr. is off to his best. And producing the top 10 in Vegas has almost become commonplace for him. You know, Nate, what were your impressions, basically, from the race yesterday? Not so much from Junior, but just the overall race.

You know, you had so much going in, so much talk going in about the Gen 6. What were your overall impressions? Mike, I didn't know. Certainly you had a compelling in Mackenzie, and Casey Kane, and that side action that NASCAR is looking for, and I know that loop data showed that green flag passes Dayton and Phoenix. Was it exactly what NASCAR wanted to see from a mile and a half trackway designed to perform well on these kinds of things? Maybe drivers are still getting good wait and see with the Gen 6.

Hey, last thing for you, Nate, is we're talking about this great. start that some of us were overlooking, as you mentioned here yesterday, but do you think that right now the media perception after three races of Dale Jr. is he's off to this unbelievable start, or do you think it is, all right, it's time to win? Yeah, I think it's, I think absolutely that, and Dale's in the season when he said he wanted to win five or six times this year, that it was time to do that. And I think that that's everybody's kind of expectation. third year with Steve LaGine and analyzing AFCAR for many years is that their peak,

you know, they really start to gel in season three. So I think now the time is now for Diorner Jr. to excel. And again, like, I think the fact that he's been able to do that, maybe that maybe that votes well for the 88 because it means that this has become the new normal. And now. Nate Ryan, Lee, Motorsports Reporter for USA Today. Follow him on Twitter at Nate Ryan. Appreciate you, man.

Hey, thanks for having me, guys. Kelly Earnhardt Miller, General Manager, Junior Motorsports. Kelly, we've got some news coming out this morning. We're announcing it here first on Dirty Moe Radio. Dale Jr. will race in the Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on September 14th, and not at Talladega on May 4th. How come? Well, Casey and Dale were – Casey was talking –

Dale actually wanted to see if he could get some more time on the mile and a half. And Casey came back with the fact that he'd like to try to win at the Super Speedways like Talladega. So with our partner in Great Clips, they were open to the change. And so we were able to make that happen for Dale and Casey. And it just works out well that we can work closer with Hendrick and be an asset to them, get our drivers more track time on those tracks so that they can in turn hopefully be an asset to the Hendrick program as well. well on the mile and a half. It seems like that's where a lot of these teams put their focus making their cars better. I mean, it's not easy to just up and change schedules around.

There's a lot of moving parts. You've got two, in this case, you've got two cup driver schedules. You've got a sponsor like Gray Clips. You've got Hendrick Motorsports. Talk about how difficult it is just to change schedules around just like that. Yeah, it is. It takes a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails to make it happen. Obviously, the sponsor is going to be running Dale at Talladega. The sponsors have approaches. that they have put together around that. And so when you go to them, that's the first thing that they think about is what promotions or programs they have running and how that works for them.

You know, obviously the drivers were the easy part because, you know, they both had already started the conversation about what they both wanted. But, you know, you've got to talk to the competition department about cars and the scheduling of that. You know, it takes a lot of kind of put it together. I'm actually excited because I don't have to only have to hold my breath at Talladega for two cars instead of three now. Absolutely. Hey, Kelly, it's Taylor. Last thought from you is obviously nobody knows your brother better than you do.

He has three top 10 finishes to start the season. He's never had three consecutive top 10 finishes in his cup career, an average finish of 4.5 to start the year. But I also sense a little bit of, man, I got to get in victory lane. I got to win one of these things. How much of his mind right now is, man, this is an awesome start, and how much of his mind do you think is I've got to get a victory? Well, I think it's a combination of both, really. You know, I didn't know that statistic about his season, so that's really awesome.

But, you know, every driver wants to be in Victory Lane each and every week. But I think that a finish is like he has, you know, that they can be satisfied in knowing that they're inching closer. And I'm telling you, you know, winning one of these cup races with the competition that's out there is tough. And, you know, sometimes you feel like a fifth place is winning for your team, just depending on what you've been going through. So, you know, I would think it's a 50-50 combination of wanting to get in the winner's circle, but probably more importantly, just keeping that consistency, these first 26 races to make the chase and then, you know, try to work on your chase.

And I know that both of you and Steve and that whole team are. Kelly, we appreciate you as always. We'll talk again soon. You're welcome. Thanks a lot, guys. Bye-bye. Mike Hogue, Dale Jr's road manager is joining us in studio. How you doing, Hogue?

You know, after being gone for 10 days, I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather be this morning. Yeah, it sounds like it. Y'all, you were on a jet, man. I don't want to hear about you getting back late. You guys got back. It was like 11.30. Yeah, it's not bad. So listen, you've been in Vegas a week with Dale Jr.

We're going to bring you in because we've got this little segment that Taylor and I've come up with. It's called What Happens in Vegas we tell on Dirty Mo Radio. and you're our guy, all right? You're ready to do this? You go half of it. I'm dirty my radio. No, here we go. You ready?

First of all, Taylor, I want to know where they stayed. Yeah. Where'd you stay, Hogue? We stayed, his funny story, we stayed at Nobu Hotel. And it's a new place in Cesar's, but throughout the week and people are like, hey, man, just trying to carry in conversation. So where'd you stay? I'm like, Nobu Hotel.

Like, oh, that's awesome. I have no idea of what you're talking about. But it's part of Cesar's, it was newly renovated. actually the room that Dale had, the lady I was working with, she was like, yeah, let me, right before we got there, the day before Saturday, she goes, you know, I'm still not sure if these sweets are ready, but let me double check. This is 10 o'clock. And so he was the first one of staying in a suite.

That's how new these are. It was awesome. Dale had a great time. The scenery, the service was incredible. So that's our quick plug for Nobu Hotel at Caesars. Best place you ate. Go figure. The Nobu restaurant.

Yeah. That's no kidding. They had the, we ate their two nights in a row. They have the most amazing. It's like a, it's habachi, but it's a different style of habauchy. You have to order ahead of time. The steak, Dale hadn't had red meat in two months, but he wanted a filet, so he got it there. Oh, he was like melt in your mouth.

Fell off the wagon. The old detox diet just. Oh, yeah, the first couple days, I think for everybody, actually. Well, who did best at casino gang? Hogue? Because it's Vegas, I assume this question would be there. But honestly, we played one night. I'm not a big gambler.

I played some roulette. I'm big on red or black and a couple favorite numbers. It okay. I mean, you know, it ended up a couple hundred bucks. But that was it. We had one night of it. I think Dale played some blackjack, and he's not even a blackjack guy. All right.

Let's see. Did you ever see the sunrise? I think we saw the sunrise, breakfast, and probably part of brunch, the first. night. Wow. Did you meet a man named Mr. Chow? I didn't, but I think a couple other people might have. Did you see Mike Tyson and a tiger? Right. You just rung a bell. When we got there, the driver who picked us up. He goes, man, I just picked up Mike Tyson, took him in the airport. And he goes, you know what? He goes, I told him I was coming to get you. And he said he was a big fan of yours and told me to say, what's up? And then, you know, I swear. I promise you. Was he playing the piano in the Nobu

hotel of Phil Collins. No, I was just curious. Big Rick, a head limo. That's his name. He picked up Mike Tyson right before he picked up us. Where was Tyson going? Tyson was going to, he said he's doing a reality show, and he leaves like three times a week.

But he was a fan of Dales and told him to say, hey. Did you guys do any shows out there? I did. Well, I asked Dale if you wanted to go, but my fiance came out with us. So my fiance, myself, Regan Smith, and his wife all went to, there's a show with the win called, forgive my pronunciation, L'Rev, L'Reve. It's like Cercitus Sillet meets water. So you don't, you went to it, you just don't know how to pronounce it.

Yeah, I can't pronounce it, but it was awesome. I've never been to a show in Vegas. That was the first one. And finally, Hogue, why don't you give us some good track stories from yesterday? The best track story was we got to do a short segment of Wild Bell from Daly's catch. And that guy's like a, he's a rock star at the race track too. You know, he's more just as recognized as well as Dale Jr. is. I can't really tell you why he was there, why they were filming

or when it's going to air at this point. Man, there's a whole lot of what happens in Vegas going on right now. Yeah, but how did that go? It was cool, and Wild Bill told a story of the first time he and Dale met, and was actually last year in Indy, which I thought was really neat. He said, he was walking by the holler, and Dale peaked out, waved at him and told him to come in,

and he thought, you know, that's cool. He wants to shake my hand, but Dale's like, no, I really want to talk to you. And he said, he walked in, and Wild Bill was starstruck looking at Dale, And it was funny because he said Dale was the same way looking at him like he was Starstruck. So just that moment. A whole lot of nothing going on.

He was like that was the coolest thing. And this guy's been a boat captain for 36 years. He said, you know, going on rough seas, fishing his whole life. And he said one of the coolest moments he'll ever remember is meeting Dale in the holler and being like, man, this is, they were both star-struck with each other. But then they turned out to be pretty good buddies that keep in touch. And he actually ended up at the house, you know, one night hanging out. Wow. Well, that's really cool.

Good group. Good people. That is cool. So Vegas was pretty tame for you guys. It's not too bad. The second half the week. First half was fun. Well, don't you say all the, you don't want to tell us all that happened?

I want to a lot. Why don't we put an itinerary of what you did up at Dale Jr.com, the first half of the week. Should we do that? Yeah, we can do that. But we'll all get fired. Hoag, good to see you, man. Yeah, you too, but. All right.

Again, this podcast brought to you by Dale Jr. potato chips. You can order all four flavors and find a retail store locator near you just by going to Dale Jr. Foods.com. Let's throw the white flag. Go, buddy white flag. Today's a recoup day for Dale Jr. As he's doing nothing on the schedule, but a little R&R. That's a good thing because tomorrow he's off to Tallahassee, Florida,

to appear at Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Chevrolet and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Buick, GMC, Cadillac as part of Dale Day festivities. On Thursday, he's got production work for Sprint and National Guard. On Friday, he'll be at the track of Bristol. First Cup practices at noon Eastern Time. Now, later that night, he's doing the NASCAR autograph session from 530 to 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Be sure to catch that.

Taylor, that's it, man, I'm back, I'm healthy. You forgot one thing. What? He's going to win on Sunday. Taylor, Zahar called it. Victory Lane. He called it. I'm telling you, it's going to happen.

That's it. All right, remember to go to Dale Jr. Foods.com to buy your Dale Jr. Potato chips. He's Mike, I'm Taylor. That's it for the Dale Jr. downloads. See you. Thanks for listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Have you tried the new Dale Jr. potato chips? Are you wondering where you can find them?

Today's your lucky day. Go to Dale Jr. Foods.com to see where you can find the chips in your area. or place an order online. You can have them shipped right to you. That's DalejR Foods.com.