The Dale Jr. Download - 401 - Texas Tire Problems; Christopher Buescher Talks New Energy at RFK

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Current events are on the docket as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis unpack the turbulent happenings of NASCAR’s weekend in Texas on this week’s episode of The Dale Jr. Download. Not only that, but they’ve brought in a guest who was very much a part of the turbulence, recent Bristol night race winner Chris Buescher.Dale and Chris have had some friendly banter over the past few weeks after Dale mistakenly referred to Chris as “Christopher” during a race broadcast. As the misstep reoccurred, Dale began to embrace the name change-up in an effort to catch his fellow commentators in the same spur-of-the-moment confusion. Chris caught wind of the joke via social media and took it in stride, even going as far as to change his profile name on Twitter and the driver name decal on his Roush Fenway Keselowski No. 17 car. Dale explains that he first grew to admire Chris when he bested then JR Motorsports driver Chase Elliott in the 2015 Xfinity Series season points standings. They discuss Chris leaving his hometown of Prosper, Texas at the age of 15 to move to North Carolina to pursue a career in motorsports. Chris credits his upbringing from his parents and knowing he was there to work and race.A huge part of Buescher's journey was a friendship he forged with Ken and David Ragan, which stemmed from a black flag incident during the Summer Shootout Legends car event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Chris recalls getting in trouble for rough driving during the race and being sent to Ken’s office, who was managing 600 Racing at the time. After the Shootout, Ken explained to Chris’ family that if they were serious about racing, they needed to move out east. When they established that they were not in the place to do that at the time, Ken offered the spare bedroom in his house to Chris. Chris talks about getting involved in the Roush Racing development program thanks to help from the Ragans. His first step up the ladder was the ARCA Series, where he raced out of Midlothian, Illinois with the Roulo Brothers Racing outfit. He also discusses adapting to a stock car after transitioning out of Legends cars, and how he knocked the nose off his car on a start in one of his first races at Salem Speedway. The story of Chris making his Xfinity Series debut is a wild one, as he was tabbed last minute to fill in for Trevor Bayne in 2011, who went on medical leave. After forgetting to plug his phone in overnight, he was awakened by Gary Roulo who informed him “get your stuff, we’re going to the airport”. In the car, Gary explained the situation, and soon Chris was at Richmond Raceway getting fitted to hop into the No. 16 car with no practice laps or simulator time. The interview also discusses Chris’ time with Front Row Motorsports after winning the 2015 Xfinity Championship and his rain-shortened Cup victory at Pocono in 2016. Dale asks about the culture change at RFK since the arrival of Brad Keselowski. They also discuss the NextGen car’s tire issues and what changes can be made to Texas Motor Speedway to help better the racing there. With only a few races left in the 2022 Cup schedule, Chris is optimistic about where the RFK Racing organization is heading, and he’s looking forward to capitalizing on the momentum they’ve built in the past few weeks. DIRTY AIR Before Chris joins the show, Dale, Mike, Alex and Hannah discuss: NASCAR’s eventful stop in Texas  Denny and William Byron have a dust-up The NextGen tire problems continue in a big way What to do about Texas Motor Speedway?   ASKJR presented by XfinityThis week the fans asked questions about: Dale’s reaction to Jimmie Johnson retiring from full-time competition in 2023 Which underfunded driver would he like to give a shot in a JRM ride Smaller steering wheels vs. bigger Where Noah Gragson’s Waffle House tradition stems from 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.

The following is a production. This is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey everybody, welcome to the Bojangles studio here for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download episode 401 with my co-host, Mike Davis. What's up, Bo? This is going to be a big one, I think. We just came off of Texas this weekend, and a lot to talk about there. We're going to try to dive into most of it. And we also got a great guest, Christopher Buescher.

That's right. Is coming on the show. New name Bush. My man. That's right. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this guy. Yeah, dude. It's hard not to be.

Blue collar. And so I'm excited about that. So it's going to be an awesome show. Buckle in. It's going to get a little bumpy. Let's get to some dirty air. Dirty air. Dirty air is not great for everyone.

But this is our dirty air. So let's go. 30 Air presented by Filter Time. Filter Time says subscription business. If you need air filters for your home, which everybody does, you need to change them. You probably haven't changed them in a while. Go to FilterTime.com. Select what you need.

Select how often you want them to come. I get mine every two or three months. And I'll send you what you need. And when they show up on the doorstep, that's your reminder to change your filters. It takes five minutes. Throw the dirty filters out with the box. You might have a kuzzi or some kind of prize in your box. You never know.

And when you're ready to quit, just come. cancel. There's no contract. So anyway, it's a growing business of mine, and we're real proud of it. Mike, I'm going to go down this sort of list of topics. Some of these I want to actually save because I want Christopher Bushers input. Love it. Me too. In no certain order, you know, we have the Denny William Byron mix up. That's right. Which you saw and nobody in NASCAR did apparently. Right. So, okay.

So, yeah, I don't even, I don't know, I don't even know what's true anymore. I know. I can't tell when somebody's telling the truth or not. I mean, you know, listen, it was on the front stretch. So it would be hard to see on the first stretch, right? Yeah, William Byron and Denny, Byron gets ran up the racetrack. So Denny gets in the gas. He's losing his car.

He's sliding up the track. I don't really know if him and, him and Byron hit, but he did, he did force Byron's car wide and into the wall. Now, Byron hits the wall, and immediately he is thinking, that was your fault, Denny. And so he squeezes Denny down the back straight away. And they, you know, runs him shallow into three. I think they ran another corner or two or maybe another lap or two. Kaution comes out.

And we're on board with Byron, okay? And he's running along. He gets the word that caution is out. He throttles back, and he rolls up to Denny's car, and he throttles up. who pops him in the back. And at this point, you know, we see Denny sliding down the front straightaway. We didn't know right away that it wasn't obvious in the very minute that it happened in the very second that happened. Not to me like, oh man, William must have spun him out.

Right, right. We're just thinking with all the tire issues, we're like, well, what's happened to Denny? We're looking right away at his tires. Well, his tires were up. Okay. And then we saw a little. a little clip off of a wall camera of the 24 getting into the back of him. And all right, there you go.

Williams trying to wreck him. Now, we all know that William did that on purpose. We all know that William ran in the back of him on purpose. Now, at that moment, it's in God's hands what happens to death, right? Right, right. Act of God. Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying like tornadoes. You never know.

Listen, he hits him. He could have self-exploaded. He could have, you know, exploded. He could have combust it. Right, right. Internally, he could have hit the wall. He could have spun into the impetus. Could have sunk into the core of the earth?

I mean, like, no idea what would have happened. That's true. But he did hit him on purpose, right? And so that's obvious. But per NASCAR precedent, they ain't going to make a call until somebody comes out and makes it, you know, an admission of guilt. Right? And I'm thinking, surely William knows enough not to do that. Well, he doesn't.

He says so he kind of says over the radio, he gets about halfway there, right? I ain't taking no more. And then he gets out of the car post-race and then fully admits it. So I would expect some sort of penalty coming because of that. Yeah. If he says nothing post-race, I think he could not, per NASCAR's precedent, he wouldn't be penalized. I don't know if the pressure from Denny and his crew chief that they're putting on would maybe spring forth a penalty. But in the past from what NASCAR's done, if you don't admit it, they don't get into the guessing game.

That's pretty much it. Denny goes and tries to wreck him. And good thing that that didn't work out. I guess it's hard to wreck these cars when they're going slow, which I can understand. that and you know it's probably best that nothing happened there for denny because he certainly would have been penalized i don't it's it's interesting mike because with with byron hitting denny he wouldn't have got penalized if he hadn't admitted it going off a past history but the way denny was doing if he wrecks byron right there i don't think you need an admission

of guilt you don't think they would have penalized william even though it was under caution until he he could have said, hey man, I'm looking at my gauges, I don't know, we've seen guys run in the back of cars.

Anthony Alfredo plows over John Hunter and Emichick in the Xfinity race at Darlington. There are moments when caution comes out and the guy's not watching

and paying attention. We know that that's not the case, but William could have used that defense and won the case, won his argument. But what would Denny would not Well, yeah, at that point it's retaliation, and there's no questions, and so you don't know.

But that's interesting to me, then in one case, you wouldn't need admission. And in Denny's case, if he does wreck Byron under that caution, NASCAR likely would have reacted immediately to that. Or, you know, there would have been no conversation about should we penalize Denny on Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever this comes out. Well, if they do it that way, then they've got to penalize both. But I'm saying, you're saying, what if they would have penalized Denny in the race, but not William? No. What I'm saying. Wow, that's a big assumption.

No, no, that's a big assumption that NASCAR would have done anything to William, though. I want to make sure you hear me. If William gets out and doesn't say anything, Denny wrecks William under caution. I bet you William doesn't get penalized and Denny does. That's interesting. Yeah, listen, you certainly could be right on that. We'll never know. But I think the bigger issue is William, don't admit that stuff.

Come on, do we need to go through some media training? What's going on? I mean, let the engine speak for itself. This is a common mistake by drivers. I've made it. You get out of the car, and you are not using all your brain sales in that moment. You're still a little bit angry over it. You're still a little bit.

I'm going to. So William, I think, and let people love for me to say that first name because I pronounce it so badly. William. I put a Y in there. Unheard of that you had mispronounce names. I know. It's one of the very few, few grammat. What is grammical?

Exactly. Nailed it. So I think that he gets out of the car. I think he's got this thing where he feels like, you know, I'm tired of everybody thinking about me as this school kid. Yeah, this Liberty University. Yeah, I'm tired of everybody looking at me at this, you know, they ain't going to push me around. I'm going to let him know.

And he's still in that moment when he gets out in a camera and a microphone is in his face. He's like, great opportunity for me to continue this narrative. I'm not going to be pushed around. Yeah, I hit him on purpose. And then after the fact you go, damn it, I should not have said I hit him on purpose. Yeah. And so, there's really nothing else to that.

There's no new revelation or anything, except for later last night, Denny gets on social media. Did you see Denny's tweets? No. Oh, Mike. Got to get on Twitter, man. You have to do a little Twitter work before you come on the show. I should at least go to Denny's every week. So let's just go through some of his radio conversation.

So after contact with Larson at the end of stage one, Mike, Denny says, you tell him I'm not lifting on the next one. And then after Denny gets spun by Byron, the crew chief comes over and says, I can't believe NASCAR didn't penalize him. And Denny said, I'll give him his penalty when he gets back here to me. Oh, here we go. Do we have to have this conversation again about when Denny promises, you know, punishment.

One more. Then Denny, post race. When I get a chance, they're all going to get it. Oh, here we go, Denny. Denny talking big, right? That was on the radio. Okay. Well, the post race was, I think, in front of the microphone.

But anyhow. He did say it in the post race. I did hear that. Denny's got a plan. Here we go again. I know it. I'm just, he's got a plan. Come on.

We've had this conversation before, and it led to, our big feud about whether Denny's paying back people. Now we're going to do this again. We probably are. We probably are. Here we go, man. Here we go. What does Kyle Petty got to say about is what I want to know.

Yeah. All right. You're loving this, though. He's adding byron to that long list. Yeah, yeah. Get in line. Yeah. This thing looks like one of them really ridiculous receipts you get from the grocery store.

It's like three feet and you're like, what the hell? I mean, why is it so long? What's that line in Tombstone where White Earth's like? Like, you know, Hale's coming with me. Like, yeah, tell him I'm coming! And Hale's coming with me! That's Denny. Then he repeats it.

I just watched that movie. Toopstone? Yeah. It's never a bad time to watch Toobstone. Yeah. It's never a bad time to stop what you're doing. That's right. That's right. That's right. All right.

So, you know, what, are we missing anything? What else is there to discuss about this? I think that's basically it. I think the NASCAR side of it, not recognizing it maybe, but. Well, and it was funny because they, didn't do anything about it. And then moments later, NASCAR Twitter posted the onboard from William Byron after they said, well, we didn't see anything.

We'll look at it later. And moments later, NASCAR Twitter posted the onboard. So it was like self-incriminating instantaneously thanks to social media. Optically, that looks pretty bad. And, you know, Miller for NASCAR gets up there and says, you know, we were watching this accident with Truex. I believe that, but there's a lot of people in that control room. And I mean, it didn't take, we got a production crew and all that.

I know we're just totally focused on the moments and it's easy for us to go, hey, man, roll that back, take a look at all the cameras and see if you find something. We do that in any instance when there's an accident or something to find. And most times we're successful. But, listen, it's also easy for them to watch your broadcast. considering you're covering their live events, somebody, somebody in the media center. Yeah. Somebody, anybody.

I mean, I'm not saying to use your broadcast to rule the sport or to judge a sport, but however, if we're having a problem seeing things like rain at Daytona. Yeah, yeah. Here's my problem with the NASCAR comment post-accident, post-race. Listen, I don't, even if they did see, even if they did see what Byron did, which I think somebody in that room saw it. Somebody in that room put two and two together. No, no, just like everyone else in the world that was watching the race.

I mean, was it that, was it that? It was obvious. It was obvious. You know, you're not even, are you, are you there? No. Yeah, you're at home. I'm TV. But at some point, you were like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know what's going on here.

I mean, if there for a second, I'm seeing Denny slide through the grass and to NASCAR's credit, I didn't go. Boy, Byron, must have wrecked him. I'm looking at his tires going, man, it's got a, flat tire what's going on with him but um seconds later it all started to make sense so i imagine somebody in that booth had that same thought i would have not changed or they would i don't expect that they do anything about it i don't expect them anything in the in the timeline to be different but if you know i don't think that they are going to change what they how they react to it okay so

that's all fine but don't get after don't get to me at the end of the race and say oh we didn't see it that's right don't say don't say it's right don't say you don't say that. That's right. No, you're 100% right because even if that's inexcusable at that point, it's inexcusable to say, I'll be honest, man. You're staging an event. Your best driver out there, arguably your best driver is spinning to the grass on a day in which people are popping tires like fireworks. I just think you don't say that. Yeah. Right. You say, look, man,

you know, we're going to take it back and we're going to figure it out. Lights me a little bit. We're going to look through all this and we'll sit through it. we'll sort it. You know, in the moment, I didn't think anything needed to be done. I didn't think anything needed to be done to either one of those drivers. So if I'm NASCAR, I'd just say, hey, man, we'll handle this. It's going to get handled. So there was that part.

And then, yeah, Denny goes on social media. Can you bring some of them tweets up last night? Danny said something about Goodyear. Well, yeah, they had the post race with the Goodyear guy. And Denny said, I'll pull up the exact tweet, but said them along the line of sure we get the exact tweet yeah quit making excuses except for the 10 you just gave yeah during that video it was like a comment so the video is no excuses except for the 10 you listed besides yourself yeah man he was spicy he was he was he commented about

NASCAR he commented to the rob the Miller uh not Robin Miller but Miller video Scott Miller yeah about he commented on that uh being like how how could you have missed that How could you say you didn't see that in terms of contact with him and Byron? Because it's your job. I'm just saying. It's your job to see that, right? I know. I know.

I know. I know. I'm just reacting. So, okay. You got no tweet? I got it. Well, the one to the Scott Miller video, he goes, they missed it. What an effing joke.

It played on the screen five times during caution. There you go. That's right. Yeah. If you just click tweets and replies right now on Denny's page. He was going back and forth with a gluck about he was on the radio yelling at them. What happened? I challenged my spot.

What are they even doing up there? So, I mean, I know that why Denny would make that, you know, the source of his frustration and all since he was in it. But to be honest with you, I think his tweet about the tires and the Goodyear stuff is the bigger story. I would agree. I think that that is, that's going into a very, very touchy. place right you know i'm always kind of measured in how i talk about good year i've been i've had

psa's with them in the past um as everybody knows or most everybody knows but they are the only manufacturer of the tire and they yeah while i don't disagree with denny's emotion about it i feel like that they there's only one way to a solution right and and that's by everybody trying to figure out together how to what the problems are how to fix it how to how to how to avoid what we saw this past sunday happening again and while i think absolutely a lot of pressure has to stay on good year i felt that since i started driving race cars i've never been in love with a tire uh at every race we've ever ran. I mean, there's, you know, and as unfortunate as that is, I don't expect that to ever change. And, you know, I've had a lot of bad, you know, Tony Stewart, there's not a driver

that hasn't got out and said, I didn't like this tire. And that's just going to be the way it is. But with these failures, it's hard to really understand where the responsibility lies. is it a good year thing is it a tire problem is it a settings thing there's some cars that didn't blow tires there's some cars that ran really really fast at the end of that race and didn't have any problems um and so where where what's causing it what really you know their needs i don't think anybody is absolutely sure uh that it's just a speed problem or it's just an air pressure problem or it's just a good year manufacturer problem you know i think that there needs to be some where i really think you know we've had some great collaboration in the sport over the years on a lot of things i think this is a

pretty critical moment for us to really get that right and really get together and figure it out um nobody wants to see that we got real close to another indianapolis yes we did it's the first thing i thought about you know and and i was uh it got if it was as that's as close as we've ever been to one. I think you might, a lot of people watching it home or texting me going, I ain't never hated a race so much. That's right. And then all of a sudden, the Denny Byron thing happened.

They're like, no, I like it. I like it again. I'm happy. So I think that while, while Goodyear needs to be held to a certain standard without question, they need to be held to a certain standard, they'll be the one. they'll be the ones that also help us fix this problem because there is no other alternative. I saw a bunch of people chiming up saying, you know, why don't they go to, you know, Hoosier, why don't they call Michelin Tire?

And Michelin was actually one that I, they're not going to go there, obviously. But these tire, these, this whole wheel structure was based off of the sports cars. And Michelin creates them for IMSA and they don't have these problems right now in IMSA. So like, maybe that's a collaborative thing where Goodyear needs to be making a phone call. because it's the one lug single, like, wider tire. I mean, the profile is very similar to MSA tires, and we're not blowing them on 12-hour races. They don't have the loads, though.

That's true, and they're a lot lighter. Yeah, they're not going around, you know, they're not taking on the type of load constantly. And the failure that we're having on the cup tire is not a failure right off pit road. I mean, it's not like, you know, we would have, you know, we'd have left front tires go flat pretty quickly at Fontana and some other. the places when the air pressure was too low on the left front. And it's kind of like that. It's sort of that same idea that they are running air pressures low enough that if you take a

wire hanger and keep bending it back and forth, back and forth, it eventually breaks. And so right at that joint where the tread meets the sidewall, that is bending like that wire hanger under load in the corner on the straightway, on the corner on the straightway. It continues to flex back and forth, back and forth. And when the air is too low, that flex point is extreme and, or that action of flex is really extreme, and it ends up over the period of a run. And it's always right around that 30 to 40 lap mark in that little window right there. Somebody blows a tire. And so, and it seems to have been that, that mark, that lap, that lap mark has really not changed much from track to track. Different speeds, different types of race tracks. We still. We still,

still break the tire around the same time. And so really it's the flex of of that many corners added together on a certain air pressure, I believe. NASCAR could look at how to make that joint stronger. But man, I'm, for all of our lives, for my entire career, if I ran too much right front camber,

I was going to blow the inside edge of the right front tire or wear it out. if I didn't run enough left front air pressure at Fontana, I was going to blow the left front tire. It was going to go flat. And so, I mean, there's been these sort of, there's been these parameters that you knew you had to kind of stay away from to keep the tire on the wheel.

And that's no different today, but I don't know. I think that I'm not trying to let Goodyear off the hook here. I'm not. But you don't want to be so, you don't want to bludgeon them so much that they're not willing to come to the table to help fix the problem. Time out, though. Listen, I agree with that 100%. They're pointing fingers already at the teams, though.

They're coming out publicly. If you want to talk about things that you shouldn't say after a race, then he's right. Then he's saying. What did they say to the teams are running the wrong air pressures? NASCAR and Goodyear, essentially say. that. Did they not? What if they're right? They could be right. They could be right. But you're talking about coming together and everybody kind of, they were still the manufacturer of the tire.

And so they at least perceptively have an obligation to not sit there and blame everything else about a tire that comes out of their warehouse. If it's air pressures, then you're going to get, then you get the teams. I don't think that the crew chiefs all of a sudden got dumbed and said, oh, we're just going to keep running the wrong air pressures. and then, I mean, like, this didn't just start this weekend. It's been an issue. So I think they're all looking for the edge and nobody knows where the edge is, but that's not new. All right, that's true. So at the All-Star race, we had some failures. All right, we had tire failures.

We went throughout the summer with a lull in the issues with the tires. We come back to Texas, all right, and everybody thinks, okay, man, you know, we understand And we understand why we were failing tires at the All-Star race, and we think we know better. You could listen to some crew chiefs on top of the pit box. We're not as aggressive on our settings. I feel pretty good. I feel pretty comfortable.

Well, when we got back to Texas since the All-Star race, we've learned a crap ton about this car and how to get lateral grip, how to get rear grip. Rear grip, lateral grip comes from downforce, arrow. any kind of lateral grip increase, any kind of rear grip increase is going to be faster, going to create more load. The tire is loaded more in this race than it was an All-Star race. And so now that threshold of air, you know, oh man, we know what, you've got to raise

sort of the threshold of the tolerance of your settings, right? You can't come back with May's settings because now the car is going to create more load the rear tires. Okay. Because of the knowledge that you've gained and giving your driver a great grip and more more speed in the corner and your driver can load the hell out of that rear tire now. Well, now you've got to go as a crew chief. And they don't, they know this.

The crew chiefs are going to go, well, man, I probably can't run that low. I got to bump it up a little bit. But that wasn't even enough, right? So I think that is every tire the same? is every tire as durable as the next? No. That's right. That is not true.

Those tires are built by hand. There is absolute variations, albeit tiny, in every single tire. That's right. And they are not all going to react the same to the camber settings and the air pressures. They're not. And so to Martin Trex's point, yeah,

you know, drawing straws to an extent. but Goodyear is not in the business. The Goodyear is not making money in racing. Good Year is not. Racing is nothing but nothing more than an advertisement for them. It's marketing. Yep, it's market. That's it.

That's right. They make money selling tires to the people out on the street, to cars that you're buying off the lot. And so that is why the message points come flying out. out about, well, they're running on the wrong air pressure. They can't, they can't go an hour. They can't go, they can't go, they can't wait till tomorrow to react. Yeah, but that's not what I'm saying. I know, but I'm just, no, yeah, we're doing this real time. I keep going. Do you not think that, no, I agree with that. Do you not think if you're good year and you're,

you know, you're, you're selling, you know, millions of tires? Yep, no, you don't, you, you can't say it's our fault. That's not, I don't think you say that either. But can you let, this narrative turn and can you can you chance not putting out some sort of messaging and letting the narrative become controlled by the by the other side no I think you had the message the message is clearly there's a problem let's all work together we're going to keep figuring this out you have the message okay it's exactly to your point I agree with everything you said my problem is is to get to continue going out going wrong air pressures wrong air pressures fine either you come clean and and let us all see what air pressure

people are running because I mean clearly NASCAR and Goodyear knows that and that's fine. I think they could be right. Yeah. I really do because I think that we're still learning a race car, a new race car, and so you don't know where the edge is and it's constantly changing and you throw resin on a track and you got Texas, which is already kind of like a bad track anyways. So there's a lot of things we're still learning. I get all of that.

And I just don't like the finger pointing and the excuse making. If you as the owner of junior motorsports, if you were responsible for your cars that go out on the racetrack. and they keep running over the same piece of, you know, debris, and you keep going, that guy keeps putting debris out. That guy keeps putting debris out. Eventually, you say to your drivers, quit running over the debris and just swerve or something. I don't know.

I mean, at some point, it's your responsibility. It's all I'm saying. Yeah, I agree with that. I don't, I would rather the messaging be, we're going to work together. We're going to fix this. From all angles, right? from Denny from and Denny will argue well you know we're trying I've tried that route and and the media the media as we know is drivers owners it's everybody's tool in a in a sort of last resort scenario

to to be able to really affect change right to go hey man you won't you won't listen to me well you'll listen to this when I spread it out to the to the Twitter world you'll by God know it then and so I just I think that this is critical man. I mean, this is a pretty big deal because it's almost like we thought the tire issues were behind us. We go to Bristol and we're having them. We go to Texas and that was

pretty bad. And so now, you know, you kind of have, we cannot have this at the final race in Phoenix. We can't have it. Yeah, 100%. You can't have it. No, we can't. It's already unacceptable. And we all want,

we all want the same thing. So that's the thing. It's like, I'm a good year fan. You're a good year fan. I don't want another manufacturer in the sport. I like good year. If we had another manufacturer in the sport, they would compete. We'll go look up the Tire Wars on YouTube from the 90s. They would compete with each other, and it would get quite dangerous. These tire failures would probably be more the norm than anything.

Rick Mass was on social meeting, and he goes, everybody's upset about Texas, but go Google this, Tire Wars deal. This was what every week was like. You were driving a car not knowing when the right front was going to blow. was going to blow every week all season you know guys were breaking sternums legs ribs um i remember a specific race at charlotte we had multiple injuries from drivers uh breaking you know hitting the wall so hard so um you know and uh anyways we i want to talk to christopher about that as well he was a part he was a part of that whole thing he had a right he had a right rear tire blow

uh so let's i mean let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's particular conversation and see what Christopher thinks about the tire issue and what Mike could be done or where he maybe thinks some of the main responsibility lies in what's creating that problem. You talked about Texas, man. There's been a big conversation about what to do with this racetrack, and I thought to myself, I was like, you know, we're going to see what happens with this race, and maybe this race is good enough to change people's minds.

This is, you know, we had a couple guys, Larson and a few other guys going to the media center, and Larson's like, you know, anything better than this, anything better in what we have here. And, man, if I could build a track, I would build this type of racetrack. So what the problem is with Texas, and it was the same with Atlanta. So I'd heard the rumblings, let's go back to Atlanta. I'd heard the rumblings about them reconfiguring that racetrack. And I said, hey, I know what you need to do. You need to put it back like the old Atlanta, two straightaways.

Perfect. We don't have a mile, mile and a half race. track that doesn't have a dog leg we don't need a damn dog leg that's right and so you know the damn dog leg is overrated so i um that's a t-shirt yeah it is so uh i uh i uh i told them that and they went well we can't we got we're not changing the front straightaway grandstands we're not going to tear down all this all this we're not we're not we're not going that deep in our pocket that we're going to we're going to change the the structure so we got to use this footprint and i'm like with shit that's no fun We got to use this footprint.

This sucks. And so they banked the corners and went with it. And now that's what we got at Atlanta. For better or worse, this is Atlanta for the next 20 years. Texas is the same thing. They're not going to tear down to turn two condos. Big Hosses stand and the front stretch grandstands are not changing either. There's your footprint.

What freak do you do? That's so frustrating because absolutely, if we were starting from scratch, building a Nashville fairgrounds or a Bristol asphalt or any kind of short track stadium high bank track would be a surefire success

all right even with the you know frustrations and questions about the short track package I think they'll figure that out overtime it's not going to suck forever and so if you could start from scratch certainly you'd have a better shot at getting it right now only now what you got is either leaving the racetrack alone or you know banking it and doing a doing an Atlanta 2.0 none of the drivers want that except Corey Lejoy or the you know you could put it back like Atlanta was reconfigure one and two to where it was the way it used to be you know

Leaving the track alone is not real. If you look at the grandstands, they weren't full. We had a pretty decent crowd, but not where Marcus wants it to be. Marcus wants more people there. We're all the owner today. We're all the owner of Texas today. Everybody in this room owns Texas. We're a group.

We own it. The sexy thing for us is to make change. Leaving it alone, probably won't help us sell any more tickets next year. Especially after what we just saw this past weekend. Well, guys, we've got to do something, right? So leaving it alone, probably, we're going to take that all to the table. Putting it back like it was, man, I don't know. Is that going to get people to come back?

I don't know. I don't feel, I don't feel, I don't feel, I don't feel, I don't feel, it might be the right thing to do. Might be probably, I don't know, I don't feel good about it. Banking it to Atlanta 2.0. I think people will buy some tickets to that. drivers are going to hate me and drivers are going to be

vocal about it they're going to be they're not going and that could hurt my ticket sales that could hurt them this this Atlanta thing might be a flash in a pan I mean I'll be honest

I'll be honest when I looked at the grandstands in Atlanta this year not impressed yeah not impressed so not sure that's a route we need to go so damn what do I do I'll be honest with you I don't have the answer to what in the hell we need to do to Texas. There's one thing I know in that we need to be there, we need to stay there, we need to race there, but what do we do with this racetrack?

I think it's simple. Okay. I mean, this is just easy. Yeah, go ahead. It is? No, I'm kidding. You reconfigure it. You reconfigure it.

I know. To what? To the go oval. Just go oval. Go replicate homestead. You can't. Because of the grandstands? I don't look at that as a reason.

Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. Okay, hold on. Now, if you're telling me that there's property that are owned, that we've got to go wider, but if you're telling me that the only reason is because of the configured grandstands, do it. Like you said, they're not full,

and it's not getting better. You're going to get tracks have been tearing down grandstands. And also, what's wrong with a track that just actually improved and has a little character? and it doesn't look right, but you know what? It had character. You're telling me Marcus can't figure out what to do with that space. He'd make some, he'll make pit road on the outside.

He'll do whatever it is. I'm just saying, it's like if you're on life support, a person's on life support. And they're like, you know, we're going to have to do this thing to save his life. But you're like, wait a second. No, no, no, that's not going to work well with his lifestyle. You know, because he likes chili dogs. So he's not going to want to do that.

All right. I'm like, wait a second, guys. This track feels like its own life support now, the way people dog it. And it pains me because Texas is a great. You should never leave that market. Let's just rule that out. Don't ever leave that market. That's a huge market.

You've got to be in Texas. I just think that there are fun, unique, wonky, weird racetracks in this world. We've seen them. And I don't think that's a big enough reason to not go fix the racetrack. Okay. So you got grandstands that do a D-shaped. thing. Maybe they have to look up, you know, an extra 100 yards here

or, okay, I got it. Basically, I guess if you built a straight, a true oval with no dog leg, the, the, the, the, the, the, frustrated way would be where the pits are now. I love it. But your, your, your, your flag stand, all that would have to move. I mean, you got, you could move

the flag stand and the track. And the grand stands? No, just just, again. Leave them thousands of feed away. No, man. Listen, we've been, we've seen race tracks that were like that? No, we have.

Yes, we have. Let me tell me one. Augusta International Raceway. Mother, that was in the 60s, Mike. So was North Wilkesboro, Dale. I mean, we're not going to go sit there, and I'm just saying there are tracks with character. Or you could have cookie cutter racetracks and everything conforms just like those D shapes. But I'm saying is it, I don't look at that as a big enough reason to not fix the racetrack

and configure it to where it is its own unique individual racetrack where it's not rep. Don't go do Atlanta again. Let Atlanta be Atlanta. And let it live out the success however long that is. Hopefully it's a long time. But you're right. We're sort of deprived of the traditional ovals. And yeah, I don't think you could go do a short track now with those grandstands.

That would be too much. That would be too much. I mean, now you're asking people to really kind of break out binoculars here. I don't think reconfiguring to one and a half mile oval is so big. so egregious that you wouldn't do it because of the D-shaped grandstands. It just doesn't seem like big enough reason. What's that thing that they do in Rallycross where they have to take a different route, one lap, at least one time during the race?

Oh, no, we're not doing that. Put a ramp over there. Honestly, stadium super truck at this rate. Look. Well, I got a crazier idea for you. I mean, okay, go ahead. So I knew you had an idea. I want to hear it.

Well, I'm not sure it would work. So that's what the, that would be my, I mean, it would really be a, uh, uh, unforgivable failure if it didn't work. So I mean, it'd be hard to, even for me, convince myself to do it. But so I believe that the treated part of the racetrack, if you watch the race, okay, let's all get in our brains here and have an imagination, right? And I'm going to ask you to build this in your, in your, in your imagination. All right, the bottom of the race track is untreated by two grooves. So the bottom of the racetrack, let's say is. two lanes wide, good old school asphalt.

And then we have this very dark treated PJ1 plus reds and multiple applications, bam, bam, bam, bam for years. And it's very dark, dark part of the racetrack about starting in about just below the third groove and all the way up toward the wall, pave all of that. Take that area up off the racetrack. I think that the treatment is already pretty, much ruin that part of the track anyways.

Anything, if they get anything out of the third groove, they all crash. They tell you that it's, it's just, it's dirty up there. It's, the, the adhesion of the resin attracts all of the tire debris like a fly trap, like a, like a, like a, like five fly tape. And so when you get up out of the groove, you just run on all the top of these marbles that are glued to the racetrack. So rip up all of that, treated surface, and pave it. And let's just try that before we go spending hundreds of millions of dollars

rebuilding this racetrack. Tens of millions just to reconfigure turns one and two. If they wouldn't just pave the treated part of the racetrack, so then you'd have like different ages of asphalt. I remember we put a grip strip at Pocono, and it was a blast in turn three. Yes, it's possible that all the cars would just attract to that new asphalt and we'd have basically a one groove track right in the middle of the corner. I don't know if that's a terrible thing to sort of go through for a couple years because once that asphalt starts to age a little bit, I think they start trying to move around a little bit. And then you've got those two bottom grooves of asphalt, you know, that's several years older on the lower groove.

That'll be a different grip level. You won't have to ever treat this track again, which they shouldn't. Some tracks should be treated. Some shouldn't. And so that's one thing to do. It's either something like that, a little bit outside the box that we've never done before, or they only reconfigure turns one and two. The problem with all of this.

What do you mean about? Are you talking about just reconfigure to what? To the original one? Yeah, I got you. Go back to the way it was. to change the banking. Yeah. The only, the problem with this is that, again,

I know we don't want to talk about tires anymore, but when you start doing this type of stuff, the tire they're going to have to bring to this racetrack. Anytime they have to put new asphalt down after what we just saw this past week, they will bring the hardest tire, the most toughest SOB you ever ran on, and it'll be bad for the racing product.

And so this is maybe one of the toughest tasks or riddles that a track owner has ever had to try to figure out. Exactly what to do to Texas. How long does it take when you pave something, just any stretch, how long does that take to start becoming a good race track? How long does it take to wear a little bit? Whenever, I think, honestly, Texas, the surface on Texas is a good surface now, and that's how long it took. Explain this, though. How's it a good surface now if it's, oh, you're saying the surface is good. The banking and what they've done to it is what's messed up.

So here's a couple, the age of the asphalt at Texas is a good age for, you know, this is a, whenever, when did they pay? it. 90s or when they I could double I think like five years ago. Yeah. Okay. So I mean,

five years ago. It's taken this long for I think the asphalt to get pretty decent. What is wrong with that racetrack is the turn one and two configuration sucks. They really hurt that corner

when they changed it. And the treatment to the racetrack is not allowing them to use all of it. Yes, it allows them to move up into a second groove and run side by side. But damn, if you go beyond that,

because it's nothing but debris stuck to the racetrack because it's so sticky, it's got freaking glue on it. Okay. And so get that treated track out, get the treated part of the racetrack out of here, no matter what. I think that's an absolute must. But do you, and maybe you stop there.

Maybe you don't, maybe you don't. For five years, see what happens. See what happens. Maybe you don't stop there and you just reconfigure one and two and put it back like it used to be. If Marcus wants Atlanta 2.0, he don't need to bank it more.

He just needs to put one and two back like it was. Turn three and four is nearly wide open right now on five-year-old asphalt. Yeah. And so if they paved that racetrack and bring a giant hard tire, there'll be wide open around that place. In qualifying and in the first, I mean,

Not that we want that, but that's what will happen. They don't need to go put it to 30 degrees or 28 or 24 degrees of banking, whatever. So that's the cost-efficient solution for sure. And I say cost-efficient, not knowing anything about the financials of that. Should the race be- Certainly a lot more cost-fishing. I know. I know.

Should the race be 500 miles? No, God, no. I don't think that. I don't think any race should be 500 miles except the day-tart of 500. When it got really close to the time of the Coke 600, it was a problem. Everybody agrees with that. I was going to say, if I could change. jump in an ad when we were talking about Texas. Rodney Childers, we're recording this on a Monday

for people that are listening, so it's still definitely a hot topic on social media. He actually just put out a statement, and, you know, he's obviously one of the most respected folks in the garage. He said, my view still comes down to the rules and the box we're in, and at the track of Texas, it compounds at all. The problem wasn't necessarily the tires. While yes, they could be better, they can always be better. But the reason there are tire issues is the shock limiter rule. The teams wouldn't be running tires lower if you could get the car lower in the back and the diffuser to its optimal downforce. If you could run the car lower with the suspension, you would actually be able to run more air in the tires to keep the travel consistent. And another option would be

to make the rear diffuser where it makes the most downforce with it a half inch higher than it already is, which is currently impossible. He goes on, there's about three pages of it, but he's basically saying, you need to make the back of the car where it makes max downforce at a higher height and get rid of the limiter rule. And so, like you said, it's going to be collaborative. It's got to be a collaborative effort on everyone's part. That's the best part of the podcast today, though. be nothing, no better ad from anybody in this room than what you just brought to the table. So thank you so much for that. Well, translate it for us.

What did Rodney just basically mean? Basically, Rodney's saying since there's rules that don't allow them to get the cars as low as they would love to run them, so they actually have to try to use air pressure or take air pressure out to get the cars to squat, and if NASCAR would open up the box a little bit for them to be able to make adjustments to get the car lower and get it into the place that they want as far as how it gets around the racetrack, they would. have to run lower air. They would be able to put as much air as they want in the tires to make the tires be able to last. I think there's a couple cool things there. He's sort of pulling the

fire off a good year a little bit and saying, you know, we, you know, we're always going to have issues with the tires. I've said, you know, that's what I said. You're never going to be fully in love with the tires everywhere we go. But he feels like that if NASCAR can make these couple small changes in the rules and the limitations, It would alleviate a lot of the issues, and we wouldn't have seen what we saw. So I guess everybody needs to go. Is that on his Twitter handle? Yeah, that's on his Twitter.

Everybody could go to look at his Twitter if you hadn't looked at it already by time this is out. Rodney, that's collaborative effort. That's just, hey, I've got a solution. We all want to complain. Me too. But somebody actually needs to come to the table and say, here's an idea. Yeah. And there's one.

Good job, Anna. Thank you. Bad ass. Bad ass right there. Did y'all see, there was one thing that we missed in the broadcast. Was it Ty Gibbs? Yes. Did you see that?

The Austin-centric thing? Yeah. No, it was Austin. No, it was Ty Dillon. Did you all see how close Ty came to almost hitting the official? Yeah. Did you see it? No, no.

I was driving. There was an incident on Pit Road where Ty Dillon comes out of his pit box. He doors. Ty Gibbs. Ty Gibbs retaliates him. frustration slamming him back and there's a pit there's a you know some crewman inspectors standing right there on pit road is they're coming by one of the cars on pit road i think it was actually chris busher that was sitting there that um tie gives uh almost gets into tie has a slam

on brakes um man dangerous man very dangerous yeah and we missed it we didn't see that on the broadcast or it wasn't it wasn't never anything that i heard over over our comms. Is there a place our listeners can go look at that if they don't know what we're talking about? There's quite a few media outlets that have shared it to be honest. Like just people have tweeted about it. It was a weird shot

to where I can see where broadcast missed it because they were calling a race off pit road. So the focus was most definitely the guys ahead calling the race off pit road and you can just kind of see in the background, Ty coming out and swerving at Dylan. and there are officials standing in the middle of pit road diagnosing some stuff and it's

it's a close call I'm trying to see who might actually have shared it shared it it's like a verified that that ought to be a penalty too right I mean I mean come on at least some some form of reprimandation you know clearly an intentional you know intentional message I mean whatever that is if he waits 10 feet it's clear kind of pit road it's still not acceptable but i don't know that natuited bumps need to be happening on pit road on reddit yeah they're the they're the nascar internet

police oh yeah nascar and reddit has it so does daniel mcfadden there's a couple people it's pretty easy to find just typing tight gibbs on twitter right now yeah oh yeah i wonder if anything ever comes to that i think it's one of those things that like if twitter wasn't here 10 years ago i don't know if it should

should it should it be a penalty yeah he should be penalized post week or you know Yeah, this week. Yeah. Oh, yeah, not during the race. What do you think they'll do? Fine.

Just fine. Okay. Monetary fine. If it happens 100 feet down the pit road where there's no car sitting there, no official, is this a big deal? Right. It's kind of my thing. Yeah.

I don't know, man. I kind of feel like it is, but, you know, I think it'd be debatable for sure. Yeah. I mean, because, like, okay, so there wouldn't be an official there, but you got pit crews working. Yeah. I mean, you got to, who's going to protect them? Yeah.

All right, Mike, it's time for us to bring in our guest. Brought to you by Ally. Do it right. That's right. Ally has been supporting us all year for our guest segment, and I would say that we have an ally today. Dude, he came out and weed with us at North Wilkesboro. That was the day he became an ally, and he stayed an ally.

Mike, I'm glad you remember that. There you go. That is the definition of an ally. That's right, because it was cold. That's right. It was miserable. Chris Busher here on the Dale Jr. download let's get him in the room

Chris Busher's gonna win he rarely made a mistake this was a breakout year for Chris Bush what's up dude you're right behind what's good what you got going on today you're it that's it well you're the start anyway yeah what's going on after you got the competition meetings and all that yeah we go uh go back to the shop

and get a get a rundown for the weekend and yeah go see a trainer over there, get a little sweat on. And then we got a, got some driving sim this afternoon, trying to work on some post-race stuff, well, this evening. That sounds like more than just this, then. I may have a little bit. Post race. So you're going to go drive on Texas in the sim?

We are. Oh, God. As long as it doesn't spin around backwards. Just when you thought you were done with Texas. Every week, every week. But try and get it better, right? It's, you know, we use so much simulation. and try and get the driving one to line up

and take a decent amount of time to try and work on it afterwards. It was hard at the beginning of the year. Without practice and testing, we just didn't feel like, well, we did a lot of simulation for all of our setup stuff but driving in it, and I just didn't feel like it was giving me good habits. And so we've done a lot of post sessions to try and tune it into where it's getting better. Where do you live?

I am an out of the mall area. Okay. Wow. How far is that mirror? A little over an hour. Wow. Yeah. Why do you live there?

Because there's not people out there. You like being out of the middle? I do. My wife's from Denton New Hope area. Yeah. And so we're only about 20 minutes down the road from them. Okay. I'm only about, probably 45 minutes to the shop.

Okay. And if I hit traffic, it's because I got stuck behind a combine or a school bus. That's it. That is the only traffic I ever hit, and I love it. So it's 45 minutes no matter what. You got a little spread? We got a little, I don't even know if it's a hobby farm at this point. We basically have a bunch of pets.

But yeah, we got a little over 100 acres out there. I mean, what's the pets? Goats, miniature donkeys. I have two of those. Peacocks, chickens, goats, or dogs that are in the house, cat, and a snake. I've had all those except for the snake and the peacock. Okay. That'd be, uh, not, not, haven't had those yet.

Peacock's actually a good idea. They're, uh, are they, are they high maintenance? Uh, no, they're actually almost zero maintenance, but let me tell you, they like to, to make a mess on everything. Really? Everything. They will, will, on every tractor, every vehicle down by the barn, they're, they're making a mess.

Yeah. And so, they look cool. Where are you from? Uh, north of Dallas. So, Prosper, Texas. Yeah. Uh, about four. 45 minutes from the racetrack.

All right. Mainly east. When did you move from there? When I was almost 16, so right somewhere around, into summer when I was 15. What do you miss about Texas? The space. Everything's wide open. 75-mile-hour speed limits is kind of a plus.

And I don't know, I just had a lot of memories there that I realize now. We're probably more fond because of the friends and some of those highlight memories growing up that probably don't miss it as much as I think about it. I love it out here. I really enjoy the Carolinas and like where we're at now. So, yeah, I definitely miss certain aspects about it, miss growing up out there and being able to spread out a little bit more. You still know some of those.

You used to be able to connect with some of your friends back there. A little bit, yeah. So I got actually some of a dad's best friend are right up the road from the racetrack. Up there, so went up there to spend a little bit of time with this. them on Saturday after practice and qualifying. He's a big hot ride guy, so got to drive a bunch of cool cars through the evening. And he'd been working on restoring a 63 Impala that he just got done. It was a four-speed 396 car.

And he's got a 67 Cougar that we took out for a ride. It's a priest out. And then got a 72 El Camino. So it's got a Keith Black 502 in it, I believe. It's pretty stout. Do you think that when your racing career is done and there's nothing keeping you here that you stay here? Yeah, I'm staying here. Yeah, I'm staying here. Yep.

All right. When did you get married? For coming up on five years, I was working at David Reagan's shop. What was your job? Arc of cars. I was working on my archa cars. You worked on your own? So when I moved out here, right before I turned 60, I moved in with David Reagan's family.

So Ken Reagan, Beverly, and Adam Reagan, in North Carolina, in Canapolis. They're in Georgia now, right? They're in Georgia now. And so when they left, I slept on the floor in the living room. I didn't even have a mattress to my name at that point. So I just got some blankets and slept on the floor for a little bit until they got the house sold and moved back over to one of David's rental homes over there off of a windy road in Concord. And I came out here with them.

and try to get settled in and try and get my foot in the door. What was the Reagan connection? How did you meet them? Legends car racing again. And I got the guy that took me racing while we were a ledger's car racing was from Georgia as well, knew the Regans. And then on top of that I got black flagged for rough driving. A summer shootout one week in Charlotte?

In Charlotte. What did you do together? I just shoved him up the hill. That's pretty strict. I think he went through the barrels. I might have shoved him a little hard. All right. And I got a...

So by the might have, you definitely sent him through the barrels. I didn't spin him, but I sent him. He sent him. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. And I got sent to Ken Reagan's office, and I got lectured. Was he like the...

He was running 600 racing at a time, which is now U.S. Legends cars. And I got sent to his... Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he did a great job at it, too. And now he's running the Georgia... division right out of Atlanta Motor Speedway. And he's gotten a great crowd back out there,

great car count. It's really impressive. He's really good at it. And he's also really good at lecturing. And he laid into it. It was two hours. I'm not a morning person. It was first thing in the morning,

and I'm doing all I can to stay awake in there, trying not to get in trouble even more. Tell me about how you got to pay attention. You got to do right. You got to remember that you're in front of a lot of people. that you need to behave, that you need to race hard, but there's a line and I learned a lot from it and definitely got better at moving people a little more gently going forward. But it ended up becoming really good friends through a black flag through time.

Wait, wait, wait. It wasn't David that you sent to the barrel. It was not David. No, that would have gotten me a three-hour lecture. All right, I don't know. Or a one-hour. I don't know. He might have been more okay with that one you know how dad's like to cut up a little bit but so actually we got to be really good friends with all the regans and david was working on arc of cars was running a truck for roush and was kind of getting groomed to replace mark martin in the sixth car at that time and he had moved out of their house in canapolis and i remember at the end of that summer ken reagan basically sat my family down and said look if you all want to go racing to pursue it as a career, you're going to have to come out here.

And my family just was in no place to move halfway across the country. I've got two younger sisters out there that were involved in school sports and gymnastics. And it just wasn't feasible. So he said, well, I got a spare bedroom. David just moved out. Come on over. And I was like, well, here we go. All right.

So you race Legends cars, I assume, right? And then what was next? Arka. Aarka, short tracks, Salem. Short tracks. Driving whose car? I ran, it was the Rua Brothers race team. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Out of Middlethe in Illinois. Yeah. Uh-huh. And David helped out through his fan club was on the car lot. The pedigree, wasn't they? They had that pedigree sponsor. Early on, yes. Yellow number 39 or something.

Yep, that was it. Yeah. Sure. Good Lord Rain, man. You got it all done. That's pretty impressive right there. Arica sponsors and numbers. I didn't know that you knew.

It's a memorable car. It was. Very bright. And the cars were even yellow when we first got up there and then everything got painted white. But they kept with that yellow for a long time because it was very. They had really solid equipment and they seemed to be like a very stable organization. Was that the way it was? Very good.

Great, great people. I tell you, no one in that garage worked harder than they did. and we were able to win a lot of races doing it. And it was a lot of fun. And it was hard. It was hard working that far away from the hub down here. Where was it exactly? Midlothian, Illinois, South Chicago.

Did you move up there? Basically for the summers. So I'd go up for three or four months at a time. Who'd you stay with? With them at their house. And the shop was out back. So, all right. Look, I mean, I've done this where I've, you know, went and shacked up

at an unfamiliar place with people I didn't know, and you quickly bond because you have the same interests, right? You're all working toward the same goal. So it's not to you too extreme, but here you are moving from across the country, introduced to the Regans, you bond with them quickly, and now you're up in racing arc of cars with that team. At what age?

That would have been 16, 17? Right, you're very young, right? Out on your own. This is always fascinated me, man, because if I was, when I was 16, 19, 21, no damn way I would have been able to do this. You know, even with, like, not you and Noah are not the same person, but Noah out here on his own. These kids that come from the West Coast and their parents just ship them out here and they're 18, 19, 20 years old and living in apartments together and free reign, keys of the car. and nobody's chaperoning them and taking care of them during the week and they're just supposed to show up and go to the racetrack

and there they are. I don't know how y'all do it. You know, when I was that age, I don't think I would have, I don't know. I mean, I just feel like that, you know, I think it's maybe how your parents raised you, but some people have like this incredible amount of maturity. Apparently you, I mean, just sitting here talking to you and having watched you, you got your head on straight.

but at such a young age, man. I mean, how did you, you know, how did you not screw that up? Well, it depends on who you ask. I probably screwed up a few times along the way. I know you made some mistakes, but, man, I mean, you know, you had to be a... Yeah, it was, my parents did a great job. I had a pretty good understanding of what I was coming out here to do, and that was not, that wasn't party of any sorts.

I had good people around me that good mentors. Most everybody I was around were a lot older than I was, and I think that helped a lot too, right? Not coming out here with people that were also 16 and trying to get into trouble. You talked about the hard work. So the hard work kept you busy. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. That was, when we were running ARCA, those were 80 to 90-hour work weeks up there.

If you tried to keep track of it, we'd get up, we'd get going. I'm not a morning person. Like, I'm terrible. And they tried to make me a morning person. I was like, look, I'll get on the back end. If you'll let me start at 8, 8.30, we'll work until midnight. I have no problem with that. How early were they getting there?

Six and five o'clock? My dad would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and be like, why ain't everybody else up? No, no, absolutely not. That's when we're going to sleep, man. That's, yeah, and it wasn't partying stayed up late. It was just working. And it was just a few of us in the shop. it was Gary and Rusty Rua and Gary's son, David.

That was pretty much it for full-time guys, and then myself up there as well. David Rua was 13, 14 at the time, so he wasn't even allowed in the garage most weeks, and he was our tire guy. So they'd have to sneak them in, lie about his age, or he'd have to do tires in the hallway, couldn't come out.

It was pretty fun. We had a lot of volunteers that come and help and had people to come do body work, at the garage during the week. It was a lot of fun. And we made it work. We did a lot of car swap in there. It wasn't room for the amount of cars we needed.

And we did a lot of shuffling stuff around. We had cars stored at old Budweiser storage facilities, metal scrapyards that had just piles and piles of steel. It was like you were driving into Armageddon coming in. And then there just been this small building laid in there with all the ceiling tiles falling out of the roof. And that was the paint booth as well. so you can imagine they weren't quite slick as glass.

But, you know, it was just, it was hard to make it all work, but it was a lot of fun. I look back at it now, it's some of the most fun I've ever had racing. We worked like crazy. I have to ask you. So your cousin, James, he raced. He's a little older than you, right? Yes. And so what involvement in racing that he had helped you?

So he started, um, uh, uh, Well, I guess going back to motorcycles, when I was probably four or five, I can't remember which one of us got a motorcycle first, but it hooked both of us real quick. And we started racing. When I was six, Dad started taking us to, I can't remember. One was Village Creek and the other one was Mojure Valley, maybe. and in Texas and riding and it got to be a lot of fun something we could do all together through weekends and then as we started coming up through different series being he was a little older he was basically always in just a little different class different class and so we didn't race

each other much for a long time and then I think the first time we really race each other again was out here at the summer shootout and there was what three or four hundred cars at that time coming out here and it was just chaos if you want to weren't shoving people out of the way and getting sent to Ken Reagan's office, you weren't winning. And it got a little aggressive quick. So there was a little friendly rivalry there pretty quickly. I mean, it was nothing crazy, but, you know, we always just wanted to beat each other. I didn't know y'all ever really competed. That was really about it. It was just a, I think it was one, maybe two summers. And then even ARCA, we didn't race each other much. And then it's just like we were always one step different in class.

He goes to truck Xfinity. He wins a truck championship. Yeah. So. He won the truck championship the same year, well, it would have been 2012, same year we won the ARCA championship. Okay. Yeah. And so is his career at any, is his career at all kind of driving you in a way? Not really. You know, we were, we were so separated through most of it that we were really kind of doing our separate deals.

A little bit here and there. Really? A little bit down in, around Houston area in Texas. He's still in Texas? Yep. Why does any race? He's still, you? I think he'd like to.

I think he'd like to. It was just hard when everything shut down there. Yeah, but why didn't he get a late model or something? Just go have some fun. Well, I don't have that answer. Short track racing. He's short track race, didn't he? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they did a lot. That's where he started down there in Houston with Steve Turner racing down there. Interesting. So what's James short for? That's a Rick Allen's joke. Okay. I messed it. Right over my head.

Yeah. So I don't get it. James Busher has his cousin's name. Yeah. And Chris Defer, you're trying to figure out. You're trying to rename Bushers. That was Rick Allen's joke on the plane home. He said, ask him what James was short for.

So you're confused because my dad's name is James, but he has to go by Jim because of James. And their male obviously gets mixed up. I was wondering, I was just wondering about him and what had happened and where he, you know, his career ended. He's a truck championship. and ran great in Exfinity cars when he had opportunities, and then it just kind of... And won some races in Xfinity. It just kind of ended it.

Yeah, yeah, and it's situational, right? A lot of it is, and it was just a lot of things happened all the same time. When that happened, did you take any note of that? Like, man, how fragile this is? Yeah, yeah, it was definitely one of those eye-opening moments. You can't count on one thing the whole time. You better have more options or more things going. I think that right there showed me how important friendships,

but knowing people through our sport was. You know, make sure that you are reaching out. You're trying to market and get yourself out there a little bit more because it's, you know, you always feel like you had something sitting right there in front of you and it was going to be perfect all the way through the end and it just went away so quick. It falls apart. There's nothing else. Yeah.

Y'all won the championship the same year, though. You won Arka championship the same year he won trucks? Yeah, we did. So your little operation, though, is working because you're clicking off wins and you go get you a championship. So that's got to be promising. I mean, you're talking about trying to make sure you get deals and all that stuff. I mean, we're doors opening up for you? At that time, you know, I was already into the Roush Development Program.

What's the Roush Development Program? It was the Robbie Reiser School. school of hard knocks basically at that time it was um when uh when we got got out to north carolina uh kin said all right so here's what i want you do i want you to go over rouse with me we're going to see what we can do and um i had a friend out in Vegas uh so i guess to backtrack a little bit i have a really good friend out in Vegas uh who had a connection to pinsky and so he had bought some old kirk bush miller light dodges and he had them out of the there in Vegas. He didn't really know he was going to do with them yet. He's thinking about going

east or west racing. And they said, well, tell you what, I'll give you one or two of these cars and y'all can try and go east racing out there. He said, but they're going to need a lot of parts. You're going to have to go over to Penske and see if you can get some parts. And so we went over to Penske and sat down with Tim Cendrick and we're trying to find fuel cells or drive shafts, whatever it may have been and some suspension pieces that were really car-specific. Those things did not have bolt-on pieces at all. There was a car that didn't have adjustable pickup points. There was one set through the car and asked about that and why that was.

And we were told because those are the right places for all those parts. Don't change it. Don't mess with that. And so we were sitting there trying to get parts. And, you know, that one was kind of wild because it almost turned into a development contract at Penske. I was like, man, this could be something. be really cool when we're sitting there and actually got to the point where we had paper in front of us and they're sitting there and it was pretty loose, you know, not promising much, but it gave us

the potential to go racing and we're sitting down in Ken Reagan's house and talking with him and David. David had gotten to the Cupside and David told Ken he's like this is going to be really hard for me to do anything to help this when I'm in a Ford and we're trying to go run a dodge on the weekend. So fast forward, kind of got a little nervous on that part of it and didn't feel like we'd be able to fulfill our end to keep it going. And that's when we went to Roush, sat down with Robbie Riser. What'd you do with the Kurt Busch cars? We worked on them. We got them East Legal, built a really beautiful car, got it really lightweight, took all the roof flaps out that weren't required for short track racing

hung a really nice lightweight body on it and right about that time the roof flaps were required to go back in and then everything else kind of started fading so that car sat there and was really nice and then we couldn't run it and just didn't work out and so it ended up going back to the west coast. It didn't actually make it back to the West Coast.

It stayed with some other friends out in this area and Kyle Weatherman actually ended up, had the same friend out in Vegas, and Kyle lived with me for a little while, almost like when I lived with the Regans. And Kyle got to, he got to rework that car, and they went and ran in an ARCA for a little bit.

Kyle and his younger brother Clayton. And I think that car met his demise at Salem, pretty sure. I think that blew its higher and qualifying. So it's no longer around. So, You get into the pipeline at Roush. That was one of the scariest initial meetings that I've ever had was sitting down with Robbie Riser.

And he basically told me, like, you're coming in here, you're going to do things our way, you're going to go where we tell you to, you're going to come drive the pit practice car, you're going to come work out on our schedule. 5.30 a.m. is when I work out. I want you to be here with me. You need to do your schoolwork. I was homeschooling. at the time finishing up high school. And then he said after that, you're going over to David's shop. You're going to work on your Arka cars. And then during the summer, you're going to go up to Midlothian, Illinois, and you're going to go work on arched cars up there and go travel.

I mean, he didn't even say it that night. It's like, it was terrifying. I'm in there like, man, what have I just gotten myself into? Very. And a lot of guys in that era were, and it's amazing to see him mellow out. but day, well, day two, I walked into his office the next morning to get ready for workout, and it's like I'd known him for 10 years. It blew my mind.

I was like, all right, what just happened? What just happened to the Bulldog that was sitting across from me yesterday? Scaring the absolute crap out of me, saying this was going to be our way or no way, and it ended up being a great deal. I had a blast, getting to know basically the majority of the shop. Got to go down to pit practice when they were running three. cars at one time during practice trying to simulate everything and who else is in this pipeline uh at that time uh i i i was it um he he had he had the gong show at one point and then you know he always seemed

to be working on a couple different drivers yes bane and uh and sthenhouse were kind of together at the same time trying to come through that yeah so they were in they were before they were a little in the pro little farther in the program already so when you come along you were you were you were a alone, which is probably a good thing that they could just solely focus on you. Yeah, it was right after Ricky came through the pipeline because he did the ARCA program that Roush did it in-house. And that was the infamous Scott Speed, Ricky Stenhouse Tobacco at Toledo that ended up, they both lost out on that championship, kind of made a messy deal at the end of the year,

and Roush basically just wiped their hands, said, look, we don't need to be messy. with this. And so that's where Robbie Reiser had a friendship with the Rueau brothers up there and said, look, this is what we're going to do. You're going to go work on the cars and make sure that you come up the way that you need to to understand how much goes into this, which is what I've always. I've always worked on my own stuff. And I was like, yeah, I'm in. Like, that's what I want to do. I want to understand what it's all about and figure it out. And so it went right into it and and started working on that stuff. And the thing that calmed me down real quick,

I knocked the nose off the car, the first start in an archa car at Salem, not off the car, but destroyed the grill screen, the nose, you know, the duct work was a little smashed. It was at Salem.

It was my first Argus start. And I think it was Frank Kimmel I ran up under the back of. It was one of those things in Legends cars, you got bumper to bumper and you throttled up. And that was how you started, right? Because there was no penalty to it. and we started Salem and I was like all right I'm going to be ready for the start I'm right up on him and when it goes green I'm going well I went right up under his his fuel cell

and tore all pieces didn't really hurt enough to where it messed us up and we got back going learned a ton that race and we ended up finishing third or fourth that first started at salem and it rained the last two laps so that was the only marks I had put on the car and I was so proud that I had not hit the fence at Salem the entire race and it started raining so hard hard in the last two laps, but it was one of those we are committed to finishing this race. I couldn't see out the windshield down the backstretch. I remember going down the backstretch, looking out the window net to try and find turn four wall to predict where I needed to turn in, clobbered the fence. Killed it. But I still have that right side door hanging up at mom and dad's

house. So got a little keepsake from it. What does Robbie Reiser say when you do that? He was actually really happy with the day. Okay. But he said, I want you to take note of how much work you're getting ready to have to do to fix that car. And he was not lying. And I think I spent three or four hours working on a grill screen to get fixed to put back in a car. I didn't realize at that time how difficult that was. I'm kind of a slow worker too.

But that put me in my place real quick that, all right, we're going to try and take care of these a little bit more and make sure that we don't have to do this every week because this is time-consuming. So you move up through the Arc Series. and then get an opportunity to race in their expinity car. The first opportunity was very out of the ordinary. Basically how I got my first cup star was the same way. So Trevor Bain was in the 16 car. I think it was Ricky versus Trevor.

Dotka was on the quarter panels at that time. And I remember it was one of those nights where we're getting ready for Salem again. and up in Middle Othian, Illinois, I was the, I ended up being a decal guy, so when everything got done on the car and about midnight at 1 o'clock, everybody was finally done, they leave, I sit in there and do decals.

And it wasn't any of the fancy wraps where you just put aside on and go now. It was layered decals all the way, trying to wrap around those wild fenders and quarter panels back then. It was a little time intensive. And so got done real late, went to bed, and didn't put my phone on the charger,

so my phone was dead and got up the next morning. I was woken up the next morning, door to that bedroom flew open about 8 a.m. He said, get your stuff. We're going to the airport. It's all Gary said. Gary Ruewell. I said, what's going on? I said, get your stuff.

We're going to the airport. He's like, where's your phone? Why haven't you answered? I was like, I don't know. I found out. I was like, oh, well, it's dead. He's like, yeah, that's a problem. We got to go.

And so we got in a van, took off to the airport up there in Chicago and flew to Richmond. As we're going to the airport, you're telling me, look, you're going to run an Xfinity car at Richmond. As something's come up, you're going to be in the 16. And so, dropped me off on a plane, landed, and went to the racetrack, found out that Trevor had, I can't remember what exactly it was. That was like a spider bite or something.

Got sick. It was two weeks where, yeah. Yeah, just a quick miss. and I don't actually have the full answer on what exactly that was now, but it was quick and got to the racetrack, had to do our drug screening on property, had to do my physical on property, get my license, went and tried to get fitted in a car that I did not fit in,

and had no laps, had no simulation time ahead of it. It was like, look, this is it, you're going. So that was a big quick moment. went, and that was first start in 2011, went to the next racetrack was Darlington and made another start. So at that time, you remember when rookies got an extra set of tires. And so they unloaded the car and we had an extra set of tires. And I remember Carl went on top of our hauler. He was running the 60.

And he went on top of our hauler with our crew chief. Chris and he said, I hope you have the backup plugged in and ready to go because this is not one of those forgiving racetracks. And it turns out we did not need it until the race. Then we definitely needed to back up by the end of that one. But it was kind of one of those races that made me love Darlington really quick. It was tough, but it was fun. I mean, it was just one of those tracks that was a good time.

Kind of caught on to pretty quick. We were having a decent day. You know, it was nothing spectacular, but it was a decent day and had it going good. And ended up, we blew it right front on a restart. I think it got into somebody, and that pretty much ruined the rest of our day. But we were sitting on the backstretch when we pulled in, and Kevin was ahead of our BR group at Roush now. He was kind of watching over and make sure everything was going smoothly.

those weekends and he'll tell the story better than I will but Ken came uh Ken Reagan came up to me after a race fender's knocked off the car we rode around we finished 17th and made it survive and uh he said I never forget he walked up you and goes that was all right but um you know we need to cut that grass tomorrow when you get home and uh I need you to make sure you go uh go go go go work on some of the stuff over at david's shop and clean up some so it's out already when he gets back and I was like okay back to reality yeah yep don't uh don't let me get a big head here at all so right back to the ground it was it was a quick uh quick turnaround right back to it so that was one of the things that i think i've learned about you is that you worked in the

shop for quite a while i don't even know when was the last time that you were like legit in the shop working on cars it probably depends on uh on your definition of legit working on the car so last time you went and did a task 2014 I was still in the shop full-time on the Arka deal. Yeah. That ain't that long ago. Not too terribly long ago. And then 2015 was our championship year.

I was in there basically two days a week. And I was working on fun stuff at that point, like making little cool airboxes for the pit. Somebody said you changed tires on the M-Sah car one time. They ended up not letting me. That was the plan. I went down. It was Grand Am cars, those Mustangs. Jack Jr. and Billy Johnson.

You were just going to do it? That would have been 2013. So, 2013, we won an ARCA championship, got in 2013. We didn't really have a game plan. We had, I think, four ARCA races lined up. And Robbie said, look, we're going to try and get you in four to ten Xfinny races plugging along the way. And I told him, I was like, look, I need something to do.

That's not going to cut. I'm going to go out of my mind and I was like I'd like to come work in the shop and he said well I can't do that that's you know that's dangerous technically you can't be an employee here because you're a driver you know you have to remain a independent contractor so we can't ensure you to be in the shop it's just not going to work and I was like well I mean I I really feel like I need something to do I said I'll uh I'll probably go out and get in trouble if you don't don't keep me busy and that might have done it so um so that's when I was able to go into the shop. They made that work to where, I don't know what the details. It got a paycheck out of it, an hourly employee basically. And he said, well, what I decided to do, I want to kind of run you through a rotation. I want you to see different departments, not just the race car side. And so we started off beginning of the year on the Grand Am cars.

And so I spent about two months down there. Lumpy was running that program down there on the Grand Am side that had, I think, four cars. I had to buy a bunch of metric tools for my toolbox because all that stuff was not our typical toolbox. And got to do some of those guys. And I remember going down to Daytona for the beginning of the year. And there were a few people short and basically asked, can you do this? I was like, yeah, yeah, no problem. And it was like went down there planning to do that.

And then it turned into, okay, we got somebody here that showed up that's going to change. can you do the driver swap and help with that? And I was like, okay, yeah, I've never done that, but they're real quick. I mean, they've got, like, surgical tubing tied to all the seat belts to pull all the seat belts up. And they didn't end up trusting me to do that either. But I tried to take care of the guards down there.

Then after that, got back from Daytona, and that was pretty much all of preseason getting ready for that. And then they sent me over to the carbon shop over at our place and got to learn all about the carbon fiber. of things. I got to go off on a few little science projects and have a little fun along the way. And then from there, I ended up coming into the 16 team and became pretty much the interior guy for that car that I was running part-time.

Really? Yeah. You were your own interior guy. I was my own interior guy. And the interior guy for the other driver. That was the bad part. It's not so bad being your own. It's coming back from weekend taking your seat out of the car to put somebody else's in.

Interesting. Not the most point. What kind of contract are you under at this point? I mean, I'm assuming you're still under your first contract with Jack. No, not at this point. So there are those notoriously long. Well, I had one of those, yeah. Okay.

But we're past that already. It's been notoriously long time since I signed up there. Okay. So, yeah, we've been through one of those already. But I'm saying at this time, back in this time, you were... At that time, yes. Yes, you were still in your first one. Yeah.

And so what kind of... Is it a driver contract, I'm assuming? Yeah. But you're... I'm curious about the language in your contract because you're doing like 10 different jobs. Stuff that I asked to do. Yeah.

And... So they just let you do it. Yeah, pretty much. But it's very clearly a driver contract. Absolutely. It was not a... You are required to work. That was all by word.

Are you happy with the money you're getting at this point? I mean... I mean, I want to be greedy. You know? I think we all do, but, you know, doing pretty good at this point to where I'm enjoying my life. and having some fun along the way. You had your own place?

So at that time, I was renting. I stayed with the Regans for a while. And then at some point there, I moved in to, down to Indian Trail, moved above a buddy's race shop. While they were racing legends cars, actually, William Byron was racing legends cars for Dennis Labor at the time coming there,

just a little kid coming in as I was living upstairs, and actually met him a long time before we ever race. against each other. But spend some time down there and then went up to Mooresville and ended up my first house, I ended up buying Johnny Sauter's old place over by the director. I just find it interesting because like, you know, most of us would presume that, you know, when you finally get and you're breaking, certainly like a NASCAR driver contract, even if it was any of the series, the national touring series that you are, I don't know if tempted is the right word, but you have reasons to not carry the same work ethic that you would have had in the previous years.

And yet you are looking for more work to do. And it's just, that's what makes you sort of unique. And this is kind of an uncommon story where even with your contract and as a driver contract with Rouse, you're still very much, you know, in the trenches. I like doing it. I like staying busy. I'm not a sit on a beach and do nothing person. I can't stand that.

I can't stand sitting still. So I've always liked to stay busy. And whatever that meant, if I could do it around race cars, perfect. If I could mess around with old hot rods, that was great. That's what got me into it through my dad. If, you know, something to keep going and be around, I got to be really good friends with everybody in the shop by doing it. I felt like I had people behind me by doing it that were really invested in and put in a little bit of extra effort along the way. and have always had my back along the way to have that support when you do have those mess-ups.

Because I've made mistakes along the way, and I think it's helped everybody rally behind you a lot quicker. I think there's been so many pluses to it that I wouldn't change it one bit if I had to do it over again. I think more people should do it. I think it's been mostly good. There's been a few negatives to it along the way, and I would say from the good side of it, It teaches you to respect a lot about equipment, a lot about people, a lot about that work ethic and what it takes to put one of these race cars on track every week. On the downside of it, it takes away some of that aggression early on in my career that needed at times. Like, probably need to try and remember I need this car next week.

And that slowed you down for a little bit and had to kind of overcome that at this level and try and understand that this is all systems go all the time. Yeah. Within reason, right? I mean, it's, but there was a balance there had to refigure. So, good point. When you got put it front row after you win your finished series championship, what's your emotions about that? Because from the outside looking in, it's like, all right, this guy is just won a championship, great driver, got great talent, but there's not room for him in the house cars.

And you have to go, you know, and you've seen these cars and how they ran, and you know where you're up against. how did you manage your, I guess, your expectations, your excitement, lack of excitement, whatever it might have been. Like that must have been a bit of a challenging thing to negotiate to have to say, okay, this is my fate. Yeah, so it's a good point because it was right from the high of highs from my career. I mean, that was the top at that point, right? And it was wild because it wasn't long into the offseason. I don't know.

It went long at all that basically were told that we were splitting our group up, that we're having a downsize. It was downsizing across the entire organization and sitting there trying to think like, man, this was the time. Like had this all planned in my head, which didn't matter what I had planned, but thought that there was this just natural progression to move up into one of the, the cup cars at that point.

I'd had two and a half years of exfinity racing under my belt. You know, I felt like that was a pretty reasonable amount. I didn't expect it after year one by any means. You know, I thought, perfect, let's go run another year. Let's get this experience. There's no rush. And after that year, after winning races and winning a championship, it just made sense that it was going to work out.

And I guess there were a few conversations along the way that led me to believe that was probably the case. and then stuff changed so quick through the offseason that kind of got blindsided by the situation there, right? What ended up coming out of it is got to go over to Front Room Motorsports and run a full-time cup car in the 34. They've had the alliance with Roush for a pretty good amount of time, right? And so we had a few people from Roush that we took up there. we kind of split races where we would have a lot of them that we would run out of purely out of front rows fleet and then we would have a handful of races where we would build a rouch house car and go run it so it was a little bit mixed

bag and there were some that worked out really well I think of you know Pocono was obviously a great strategy call in a win and put us in a playoffs but you know outside of that go to Bristol and I think we ran fourth maybe in a cup car there that first year in rookie season and like I said I've always loved that racetrack and it felt like that was one where it really just kept having some some bad luck on pit road and kept having to pass the same five or six cars every restart so I think that if we could have could have cleaned that up we had a shot of winning that race that year so you know there was performance along the way but it was definitely not what you're expecting

going into it. The race that you won in the fog, a lot of people always tend to say, you know, rain short in races or any kind of race that's cut short, doesn't feel as sweet or doesn't feel as good as crossing the finish line and getting the checkered in front of the field at 400 miles or 500 miles. While that may be true when you're driving one of the best cars in the garage, I don't know that it would have really mattered to me if I was, driving one of the cars that tends to, you know, maybe the B or C team in the series.

And so I wonder if, you know, now that you've experienced both of them, having won outright in a really race-winning capable car versus that, what was the difference, I guess, in the enjoyment you had? Because I know it's unique circumstances to be winning a race like that. I've won them that way, too. But I think if I was in a... the front row car, I don't give a damn how we got the checker flag. For that whole organization and team, like what that would do is, it has to be pretty insane. So celebration was probably not that unique between the two. Yeah, that's, I think the first one, what took away from it was the fact that we were in Sikh shelter

when it actually was called. And we didn't even get to go to the neat victory lane at Pocono. We had to go into the garage. We were, before we were done with pictures, the bottom fell out. The garage was flooded. I was walking through water up to my knees coming out of the media center to get back to the hauler. That garage floods quick.

It came real quick, almost like Richmond. And it was just one of those that you didn't get the proper experience. Crossing under the flag is special in itself, but we didn't even get to go to the real victory lane. That was the part of the. that one that was a little bit of a bummer. The flip side of that was to win with that organization. They'd already got a win with David Reagan, right? And, you know, Bob Jenkins has done a good job at building up that team and working hard to make it better. That meant a ton to everybody. It had been a year that we'd been fighting for, you know, trying to run top 15 a lot. And it was a good

called by Bob Osborne on the box and it meant so much to everybody there the whole organization. It was huge and it put us into the playoffs. You know, it was just a moment that, yeah, it meant just as much to us at that moment as anything ever had. I will say the Bristol one was more fun, but it's because Bristol's my favorite track. You got to cross under the line, you got to do your burnout on the front stretch, which was a little rusty, by the way. I've got to work on that one again.

Got to go to the real victory. Lane, do the whole celebration with all the people there, you know, all the presenting sponsors. We just had so few people left at Pocono. We were the last 12 people on Pitt Road at that point. It was cleared out. The pit boxes were closed down, covered up. Someone told me Denny Hamill was back in Charlotte when it was finally called. And I don't know if there's a truth to that or not, but it took so long on that one that

It took a lot of the enthusiasm out. Got you. Now that you're working with Brad, Brad comes into Browse, right? And I've known Brad really well over the last decade or so, and he has an opinion about a lot of things and has this. And a lot of times, the way I see him is he's hard to corral, right? He's kind of, his vision can be kind of, you know, a bit ambitious at times. But it seems like, man, and you tell us, it seems like that this is like a really, really good fit between him and Jack.

And I guess Jack's hope for where they could go, where you guys could go in this new direction, I hear that the culture's changing fast. I hear that there's a lot more pride in the shop. I hear that the shop's cleaner. There's, you know, cars are looking better. Things, you know, I hear that everything is turning in the right direction. I mean, obviously, you can see it on the racetrack. But you've been there so long.

How has it changed in just this short, last, you know, 16 months? We might not have enough time to go through it all. But it's all really good points. It's been really awesome to see Brad come over with the energy and the enthusiasm to take on this role. I know it's a big undertaking. I can't do two things at once. My wife will tell you that. But Brad's over here trying to drive, run a race team, run his advanced manufacturing company.

He's got two daughters and a wife at home. It blows my mind how much he is able to get done every day. and I really envy him for that. And what we're getting done is meaningful too. You know, we're not just going in circles. We've been able to see so much change while he's come in. Him and Jack actually remind me a lot of each other. You know, both are very, very patriotic, very proud of their Detroit area and growing up in Michigan

and coming in and wanting this to be successful. They both have a lot of drive to build this thing. up and so it's been cool to see Brad's energy raise jacks back up as well and and I think everybody's been seeing it from from both sides of that and really enjoying it. The most obvious thing is when you walk in a shop, it's way cleaner, way more organized. I think we talk about the work ethic and what everybody is putting into our cars to make sure they are as nice as they can possibly be each and every weekend. You know, that's been moving people around.

Brad's very detail-focused, and it's a lot of small things. And I think that the mentality there is we're in a very tight box now. So it's not one big thing that's going to find you a lot of speed. It's going to be 20 little things that are going to add up. And so that's where I think he's come in and really put a little bit more of that mindset into it and been able to put the energy behind it to keep us focusing and finding those details. The organization had a auction of all of the old stuff. Did you see that?

So I'm sure you did. Did you buy any of it? I've got a bone to pick because I had my name on a few of those items that left before I could get them done. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean? Basically. They did a house cleaning? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, getting rid of all the old stuff. There's a lot of stuff that was obsolete because of the new car. Not only just race cars themselves, but parts, equipment, pit equipment, a little bit of everything.

Yeah, it was all over the matter. I mean, a lot of, it was really cool. I wanted working equipment. I wanted surface plates and racks and what were you going to do with those?

I want to work. I want to work back at home. I know what? I don't have anything fully planned. I got a bunch of hot rod projects that were. We're getting to you. Not talking to race cars?

Not quite yet. So a buddy of mine does have a dirt wave model that I've been. What? Oh, I'm making them mad now. You see that? You got a little late model stock racing, man. We need some late model stock racers. Okay.

To hear all these things that Brad's doing, I have to ask you, what was it like before Brad then? Because, I mean, I'm hearing about it's cleaner now. What was this place? Were we working out of a barn all of a sudden? I didn't think we were, but it sure looked like when you compare them now, it feels like it more so. Is that right? I mean, it's just...

That feels like a lack of leadership, though. What was the problem? You know, I think that there's been a... Brad's looking at it differently, right? If you look at it from others' point of view, if it's not going to make our race car go faster, then why are we going to spend all the time and money on it? And I think that the problem with that became,

is if everything else looks rough, why are you going to just specifically make the race car look nice? No, I don't know if that's accurate. I mean, I'm not in everyone's head, and I don't know if that's where everybody was at, and I doubt it. You know, I think everybody has pride in our shops and working, but when everything else is cleaned up, I think it just puts an expectation there that everything needs to be nicer. It looks better for our partners coming in, right? and you know, bring them in. You know, all these shops look so nice when you look out through the glass.

And we had some redone epoxy floors that helped it a lot. But, you know, the walls had turned yellowish. And we had just mismatched stuff everywhere. And, you know, it's kind of been pieced together as the race team grew. And then as it shrunk back down, there was stuff everywhere. It was a little bit chaotic. I'm surprised that Brad was able to go in there. and that everybody didn't fight back against his opinions about what needed to be done.

So, you know, when things have been ran a certain way for so long, and you bring in this new guy who has just a bit of the equity, right? He's not a full owner. He's going to come in. Brad's going to go, okay, I see X, Y, Z that I'd like to change. And everybody goes, well, you know, we haven't really done it that way. Yeah, and maybe a couple weeks from now, he'll get over that, and I'm just not going to really worry about it.

You know that happens nine times out of ten, but Brad, I guess being persistent and Bradlike, just ground away at it until he's been able to infuse his part of, you know, the vision. Yeah, you said it. He's a little bullish, right? Yeah. And a little opinionated.

And I think if you ask Brad, there was push. back and he wanted to change x, y, Z, and maybe he got X and Z. So if you were to sit him down and go through that, I think he'll tell you in detail that there probably was in a lot of different areas. And at the end of the day, did painting the shop floor make our cars faster? You know, it did not directly make our cars go. I did reorganizing and getting all the cabinets done in a clean black make our cars go faster? Absolutely not. But it just looks nicer. helps when we bring people through. It helps them show that we are committed to making this thing nice for the long run.

I think there's something to be said about it. There's a lot to be said about it. Every mechanic that's waking up in the morning and get out of beds ready to go there instead of thinking, damn it. Yes. I got it. This place is rough, dirty. That's right.

That's pretty cool, man. And I'll be honest, man. I thought Brad was eventually going to be a positive addition. I didn't know how long that would take. I just felt like that things had been going a certain way for Rouse for so long that it wasn't going to be as quick as it's been. And I think I'm really, and so I want to ask you about the next-gen car. How much has the next-gen car been a part of y'all's ability to quickly change course?

Because I think the next-gen car, if we stay with the old car, the change for y'all might have been a little more gradual, you know, not quite. not quite as progressive. And so maybe has the next-gen car allowed y'all, you know, the whole whole sport got a reset, back to square one. Right. Everybody at zero. It did.

And it was pretty much baked in. And, you know, we, Roush got behind at the end of the testing era. So once that all got tightened up and shrunk down, it's hard to dig out of a hole when you don't have the time to go to racetrack and fix it. And I think that with, the old car. It was kind of just that constant cycle of we're behind and we can't figure out where to go to get there.

And the next gym was that big reset. I think we hoped that the reset would be quicker. I thought that we hoped that we would fire off beginning of the season and be flying. So let me ask you, you go to the clash and

y'all had heartbreak there, right? Yep, we both missed the A-main, right? Embarrassment and frustration. Yep. I've really, You know, y'all probably felt that emotion, very strong. I'm not one to discredit it. I was sitting at home going, well, you know, it is elimination. Somebody's got to be eliminated.

I could walk away for that and go, you know, screw this race. It's don't matter. This is an exhibition silliness anyways, right? Not even a real racetrack. So I'm just saying, you know, if I was missed the show, I could all. Just went from talking about short track race into that's not a real race. I miss the show. I could come up with plenty of reasons to not give it down.

To feel better. And so I would walk out of there without a problem. And then y'all go to Daytona and you're like, you know, you rocket fast. Right? And so, yeah, I guess after Daytona, you're kind of thinking, hmm, maybe this goes quicker than I think. That's, well, the Speedways have been strong for a rash for a long time, right? Like, that's where the couple of wins came from, the power from the Rousch-Side side of it.

I mean, it all comes together to speedways. And so we always expected to be good at those ones. And so it did help kind of reset. But then it was off to the West Coast swing and how do we get this right. Had some glimpses speed. We spun out several times, blew a tire, Fontana. And then Phoenix was my best Phoenix to date.

And so there was kind of this idea that, okay, so it looks like our Speedway stuff still going to be good. but there was this glimpse of hope that the clash was really bad. We worked on it for Phoenix. We had a test out there, and we were able to go run top 10-ish, which was almost like a win for me at Phoenix. And no one's ever from the driver's seat supposed to say that 10th feels like a win, but I've run 30th there a lot.

And it's been right there with Richmond as the toughest place for me. And that was nice. So that gave us that idea that, okay, our short track stuff's coming along. here. Let's work on that heavy. So you ran really, of the two between you and Brad, you've been the better car majority of the year, right? How does that dynamic work? Brad's car has, you know, he's ran great the last two weeks, no doubt, very fast.

But most of the year, the 17 cars run a little bit better. You probably know why. He probably knows why. it's probably not a big deal. Has it made things interesting? I will say, too, I want to add to this, I thought that was awesome of Brad to come out and publicly put his support behind you. As, hey, man, this is our guy.

This is my guy. My thought about that is, you know, if you watch people that are brought in, let's use NFL as an example. you hire a new coach, right? He comes in, he's going to change the staff. Got to have his staff. And that's not the quarterback he drafted.

That's the quarterback the last guy drafted. I don't know. That's not my quarterback. I'm going to get my guy in here. And so, you know, I was, when Brad made those statements, it really, I guess I lost some anxiety. I didn't even know I was carrying because ever since you beat us in that Xfinity series title at Homestead, I've caught, I like to, I like,

Every once in a while I like to call you champ to remind you of that championship and what that day felt like. Because I remember I was as happy for you. If we not won it, I was hoping you would win it, you know, because you're just like you're a very good representative for the sport and a good dude. And so to hear Brad say those things really matter because I think a lot of people still felt like you hadn't had your chance and you hadn't really had your opportunity to prove, you know, that you could get it done. and now that, you know, he's made this commitment to you. Certainly you hear those comments. Yeah. Right?

Certainly that's got to make you feel good. For sure. Plus you're out there proving it, performing. You know, he knows y'all got the same stuff. So he's got to be going, man, this guy pretty impressive. Yeah. Are you having those conversations? We are.

I mean, I think it started off pretty early when it was announced that Brad was coming over. And I guess I didn't have the understanding at the time of why we were. were having our renewal talk so early in the season because that was not typical. Usually those don't get done early and so it was it was at the time unknowingly great to be sitting there and getting that squared away and then and then come come to find out and hear some some more of the comments that have come out and how Brad was was confident in what I could do for for Rouch going forward and what we could continue to to build up. So yeah, I mean it definitely gives you a lot of confidence going into the season, right?

And so, you know, I think that Brad's been a really good boss. He's been a good teammate. He's strong in a lot of his mental ways that lead everybody and continue to keep everybody boosted up. And, you know, to your point that, you know, Brad's been very, very supportive of both teams. And it's a high tides will raise all shit. and that's very important to us because we only have two of us right now. We have to work together very heavily to build this thing up and keep getting it better. And we had a little bit stronger summer,

and I'll be the first to raise my hand and say, I know how hard it is to come to a team and not know the organization and come in with a new crew chief and try and get your bearings about you. It's tough that first year. And I've really, I've seen it at front row. I've seen it through different Xfinity years and seen it at JTG. It's hard to hit the ground running when you have people coming into an organization that haven't been there. Scott and I had the luxury of being at RFK, knowing how the programs run, knowing how the shop typically runs before Brad gets his hand on it and changes a few things upright, but all stuff for the better.

We were able to find, I guess, a little bit more chemistry or a little bit more streamlined process through a lot of it. And I knew that would be hard on Brad and McCall. And so, you know, I'd be the first one to stand up for them in that. And I'm also really proud of what the 17 group has done through the summer and continues to do at this point. We've been able to hit on some good things and we're staying with it. We've had speed a lot. we've needed a little execution. We need a little luck along the way.

I'm one of many, many drivers this morning talking about luck this weekend. But, yeah, I've been really, really impressed with what everybody's been able to do and what we've been able to do to try and help us all. Bristol, for Brad to come to Victory Lane after leading the race and blowing a tire, I know how bad that hurt. And he was over there as excited as could be for us at the same time. Well, I know he was disappointed in what happened to him on track, but trust me, when his car wins the race, his ass is going to Victory Lane, no matter what happened to him five minutes ago. How do you isolate that?

Like, you're a driver first. Yeah, but it's like flipping the card over, right? You go from two of clubs, not worth the to, you know, an ace, right, quickly. Okay. So, Dale's able to rationalize a lot of bad things into good. If you haven't noticed, I mean,

from the Bush Clash to the... I'm a lining kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Oh, yeah. Hey, man, you need to be put... You need your day turn around. Just give me a call.

Yeah. All right. Just make an appointment here with Dale. Dr. Dale. Give me two minutes. He'll fix you right now. I'm happy. I, um, no, I mean, I know he was frustrated about, you know,

I didn't get a yellow. Christopher Bell gets a yellow. That's nothing other. but still man I mean all the he's he's been right alongside you all year long trying to put this thing where it belongs and there it is up on top of that building where it belongs where he wants it to be and so I always find that interesting I was standing there in victory lane one day maybe you'll experience this if you ever get an opportunity and you build a race car and send it to the racetrack when it wins the race and you're not driving it you don't know what the hell to do to yourself so

I went to Victory Lane this weekend with Noah, and I'm standing with the photographers, watching them, watching the team celebrating. I'm just, like, enjoying that as much as, like, being over there in the middle of it. Okay. Because you really don't know what you, you really don't know where you belong. Or as an owner, you're kind of, you know, you didn't drive the car. You didn't call the, you know, you can call the shots from the top of the pit box. You just kind of watched it happen, right? But you got to remind yourself, and I think Brad certainly felt that in the moment.

that he, you know, he's part of the one that he's definitely, there's, I had to remind myself, I guess, standing there that moment that there's a lot of things that happened that helped this happen, helped this be a reality of the day, right? I did a few things that got us here. And I want to talk about the tires. We, you know, let's get into a little modern or little current event. Roddy Chilters is on Twitter today talking about a solution,

whether it's the right one or not. Probably is the right one. But he's like, hey, man, we're kind of limited on how low we can get these cars with the suspension parts. And if NASCAR would open that box up, we could run a little more air into tires. It wouldn't have to be so aggressive with that. So when you blew a tire,

this ain't probably the first tire issue you've had this year. Where's your opinion on, you know, kind of how to, what's the calls in it? I'm sure, I don't know if anybody knows exactly, but what's your kind of opinion on it? what needs to happen? What needs to fix it to avoid this happen anymore? Man, you're definitely asking the wrong person for this.

But I think we've had three this year. Two left rears. We've had one five laps in the practice at Kansas. We had one at Fontana that don't remember where we were at that run. But at that point, that was pretty new. We didn't have any reason to know what was going on it. at that. Kansas we went to and felt like we were pretty conservative on what we were doing,

and obviously wasn't the case. And then Texas bullet tire, that one's, you know, air pressures come up a lot. We know that we were several pounds higher from cars that didn't fail. And that's what we're trying to figure out is how can it. That's a problem. If we can't figure out what it is, if you're going to throw eight possibilities at us as to possible causes, we can't fix eight things right now. And so we've done what we know to.

That's my first right rear, by the way, also. Everything's been left rear issues. I watched most of the field have left rear issues until we got to Atlanta. I think we started seeing some rights. When we blew that right rear there, we probably jinxed it during the lightning hold, sitting there saying, no, we're not worried. I mean, we've been pretty conservative on everything, and we've watched everybody else have their issues.

We've even had tires cut apart from earlier in the race, because I did have a vibration early, but they cut apart. They said it was all good. They had no signs of any failure that was coming at that point. We had a lot of laps on those tires, hard laps early and a lot of heat. So I don't know what caused our ultimate failure. We were running fast at that point. I know that early on in my ARCA career, we had a red flag at Mansfield.

We were running really hard and hard lesson learned. had that red flag I sat there. I did not roll the car. I didn't move. And we got back going, we blew a tire almost immediately going back. And I was told that it was the heat soak in one spot. You know, that hot caliper right up against the wheel and right against the tire right there just melted the bead more than likely. And I think back to that, we had that lightning hold.

Maybe sitting on pit road heard it. We had three cars go and blow a tire within 15, 20 laps of each other after getting back going. speeds were up, but if we're in such a tight box that we can't pick up a few tens of speed on the racetrack without having issues, that's not okay. That's interesting. I didn't think about the other car sitting on pit road for, you know, 30, it was a 45 minutes, almost an hour.

Yeah. With that tire sitting there deflected somewhat. It's a thought. I mean, we're not using a lot of brakes, so you shouldn't have all that heat in one spot, but you're essentially flat spotting a hot tire coming in. Yeah. I don't have the right answer to this, but if it's,

should be, if it's something we're worried about, should we be allowed to hit pit road and just everybody changed tires to be safe? I don't think that we really have enough tires to waste a set like that either. Nobody had enough tires. I don't want to add more confusing to the confusion.

Well, that's my job. I'm doing that right now. Well, I was going to say, is the, you know, we went from a steel wheel to an aluminum wheel.

You know, does any, has anybody, done any science on that, right? What difference does that make? Does it make a difference? Does it make a difference? Is it matter? Right. Now, Rodney has a solution, right? That's great. That's what we need. We need people with solutions to come to the table like Rodney, these guys smarter than all of us that are going to go, man, if you just do this right here, we should be fine. Yeah. And I think that that's what really needs to happen. But I bet that a year or two years from now, we're going to find out that it was probably, there was some, some, some truth in what everybody's opinion is as far as little air pressure, a little this,

a little this, little that there's going to be this one thing, too, that none of us ever thought of. Like, oh, man, well, that aluminum wheel. Man, we didn't know that was doing this. Just sit there and scratch our heads on it. Something that we ain't really thought about yet that's going to be playing part of the role in this. Well, can I ask a question?

It could be for both of you guys. Help us understand people that aren't on race teams and not drivers. If Goodyear recommends a tire pressure, because we're here in Goodyear and NASCAR say, well, the teams are the ones that are causing this. They're not running the recommended air pressures. How does that work? How does it work? When does the tire guys get the recommended air pressures?

And then what happens? What are the conversations like? Like, okay, this is where they are. Now, let's go raise it a bunch of C. How does this work? No, no, no. So the record, NASCAR gives you information and data to the teams well, before. beforehand that says this is the recommended air pressure for this tire now NASCAR at times has had a

rule of a recommended air pressure for maybe the right front tire can't be below 50 pounds something like that so NASCAR has done that where they actually walk up down in pit road with the with air gauge and check your tire if they want to I don't know if we have rules right now that you know regulate the limit of air you can have in a tire because basically Mike the lower you go the faster you go so guys are trying to run as minimal as possible. And as you, you know, we mentioned it earlier in the show, as you take air out, it lowers the back of the car, gets the diffuser closer to the ground,

the diffuser makes more down for us. Do you hope that there's a, obviously I'm sure you do, do you think there'll be a quick resolution? Do you think, where is there, have you had a moment to even think of where we might stumble upon this type of issue again? No, I haven't thought about going forward, but I don't see a quick solution in hard parts for the teams to be able to implement quick enough or inexpensively enough. I could see maybe that rule coming back into play where they put a gauge on a tire.

But that's kind of my point is I'm not of the belief that it's strictly air pressure because I know that we've been safer at times and had issues where others have been significantly lower. I'm not talking tens of a pound. I'm talking several pounds different. So that's the only thing I can see being very easy and quick, right? Put a gauge on it. See where it's at on pit road before you go out and implement that rule. But does that fix it? I wouldn't be completely convinced.

I just don't know what we can do quick enough. Let's play a game. You own Texas Motor Speedway. You own it. Own it. I'm going to give it to you right now. It's not mine, really, but you on it now. I appreciate it.

What are you going to do with that track? Do you leave it alone? Do you, how do you change it if you do change it? There's a big conversation in the sport right now about what to do with Texas. Texas needs something. The reconfigureate, Kentucky wasn't that bad to me. I enjoyed Kentucky, but it was war out and that made it okay. I think the problem with Texas is we're all victims of technology and knowledge and asphalt's gotten too good.

I think that what they're putting down on racetracks right now is too good. I think that it does not age because from a financial standpoint, why would you want it to wear out in five years? You want 25 years of that surface on the racetrack before we have to do it again. If I own it, I don't want to have to pay to repave it every five. But for the sake of our racing, you have to have older asphalt. It has to have some wear to it. It has to wear away in an ideal groove where you start searching for fresher asses. I mean, our best racetracks are the ones we can move around.

And so that's my first thought is the asphalt's just, it's just too good. So the asphalt, even now, you don't think is aged enough? I don't think so. So you, so on that, where are you running in the, let's just say, hey, man, you're running the bottom groove that's untreated. It's still too good. It's still too new. Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Because, man, the shade of it, the grayness of it, I know they bleached it and, and, put all kinds of crap on it to try to age it quickly. And so it visually looks like it be quite porous and abrasive. It's not. I don't think so. And so, okay, so the asphalt as is is not old enough.

So scrap the idea of you wouldn't leave it alone. You'd have to change it. You'd have to change it. All right. Are we going to dig up turns one and two and put it back like it was? Here's where it gets big. If you're going to repave it, you might as well cut it down and make a short track. All right, let me ask you this.

You've got turned two condos. They're sold and people own them. You've got the front straightaway grandstands that you're probably not going to tear down or reconfigure or reshape, right? That's hundreds of millions of dollars. Big halls on the back straightaway. I don't know if that's a big deal or not.

He might can move. But anyways, so your footprint is somewhat limited. When you say short track, like what we talk, Three-quarters. I could go to a three-quarter. You've ever been to Irwindale? I flew over it. But yeah, I've seen it.

Braced down and I racing. Okay, so I think of Irwindale as kind of the biggest version of a short track that I can really enjoy. I think that one does really good. I like the flatness of the bottom with the progressive. I love that. I love options. Let me ask you this. get something similar or close, get as close to a homestead as possible.

I think that would work okay. I think that, I think a lot of it comes down to progressive banking, but I think if you're going to do it, you need to, you know, I mean, you almost need a Darlington type. Like, it's got to be extreme. If you're going to add. Extremely progressive. You're extremely progressive.

If you're going to have that much width in turns one and two, most of that is completely useless to us. So I am of the opinion, okay, if we're going to do a progressive banking track, let's put the apron and all that back like it used to be in term one and two. All right, and so now we basically

have a very similar width of a race track in three and four and one and two, right? Okay. And we're going to take that and make that a progressive bank track. Yeah, I think that that helps it. I mean, that... We're not going to change. Now, we're not

not going to make it steeper. We're going to leave the top the banking it is. We're going to actually make the bottom flat. You're just going to fly the bottom out. Yeah. Don't you think because we want to go slower in the corner, right? We don't want to go faster. No. No, you don't want to pick speeds up even more. Yeah. Now we're, you know, wide open through three and four on qualifying. So if you can do something to take that away. So if I flatten that corner even with the new asphalt. It should do it. Yeah. If I take about four degrees out right there. Yeah. Six while we're at it. Let's go for it. Yeah.

Let's make a bigger change. So kind of maybe go back toward what maybe getting a little closer to what Vegas was originally before they banked it. Remember how Vegas was a little flat? No, I don't remember that one. Oh, man. It was like 90, it was like 2000, 2001. Oh, no, you're. I think in 2004 they might have put the banking in.

But it was flat. Okay. Pretty flat. But fun. I'll have to bust out the PC NASCAR 99 there. You didn't tell them your real idea. Oh, okay. So here's what we've all.

Okay. So you've already. had this discussion debate. You're setting me up. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not setting you up. Just trying to give you an honest attempt at answering it. But now we can tell you. Sitting down and having, we've ran through this idea several times on the show in this show already. At this point, my favorite is a Texas D-shaped homestead variation, right?

That's where I think they need to probably go in terms of like surviving long-term, keeping the same footprint. rent, that would probably be best. My other short, I think the most cost effective, now you're the owner of the track, all right? So you're going to spend, you're going to spend, you know, let's say $100 million doing a homestead configuration, a little progressive banking job. I got a deal that only going to cost you about $20 million, all right, and maybe even less than that.

So leave all of the untreated asphalt. Don't change nothing about the trade. track, leave it as it is, go where the asphalt is treated with the resin and the PJ1, it's about two and a half lanes up the tracks where it starts. Because y'all can run side by side and stay out of the treated. Just barely. Just barely. Yeah.

So just above that, right? Just above that, cut that all up, all of the treated black, darker asphalt, repave that. So just same profile, but put new asphalt on it. Just where it's been treated. Be honest. Now be honest. All right.

So now the older asphalt on the bottom, newer asphalt in the third-ish groove on up toward the wall. I just don't like new asphalt. I don't either. But you're going to have new asphalt in any solution. Anything you do, it's still going to be new. Yeah. But I see the potentials there. But what I'm hearing is just having that second groove, just a absolute fast knife-edge lane that you're still just going to be right on.

the edge. So the problem still exists, no matter what you do with pavement, though, right? If you went into turns one and two, you made it progressive. It sounds like if you're trying to talk about homestead and say it needs to be more like Homestead, we're close to the same page if you take out my extreme short track ideas. So if you go in there and try and profile that, it's just the progressive banking that does it, right? That's what helps Homestead give you options on top of the fact that it's just worn, pull

them out now. It's so fun. I love it. I love those racetracks. I can't tell you how much I miss. Atlanta. I appreciate you prolonging that for several years. I think that Kansas has been one that's come around now that I'm starting to enjoy more. And Kansas, that one aged fairly well. And I don't know what's different, but the Texas surface, I know it's newer, but it's just not gotten there yet.

Kansas? Kansas? Kansas has that run up. It does. Yeah. Yeah. So you have that option there. And it's worked out and it's given you lane choices. Yeah. And it's put on some really great shows with this car. Yeah. And that's what you need. You just can't follow with this car. Straight in line, the side-by-side has gotten so much better, so much better.

But the straight following in line is really bad still. I watched in the race this past weekend at Texas, I watched Austin Cendrick try to pass Ricky Stenhouse for seven straight laps and they ran side by side. And I thought, I literally thought that I was going to see fire. shoot out the roof of the two car at one point because Ricky's den house was aggravating the shi-d-out of him it was so funny because Cindricks on the bottom and Cendrick down the front straightaway he likes to run out to your door like yeah he does this he thinks this he thinks it's cute but it's really annoying right and so Ricky's like oh are you going to do that then I'm going to race a shit I'm not going to let you have it seven laps straight they did that at the end of the race

I was laughing my ass off in the booth. Was that before they spun? I was out by this. Did they get into each other? Yeah, they hadn't wrecked yet. Gotcha. They didn't actually crash each other in that moment. I think Ricky spun.

Ricky got loose and the two trying to avoid him spun. Ricky spun probably a football field in front of him. Okay. And Cedger came through trying to miss it. Hey, what do you guys think of this question? What is this tire stuff doing to the credibility of our sport right? now. It's not good right now, right? I mean, this is this is not the storyline we needed in our playoffs by any means. It's not something we need to talk about past six weeks in. I feel like

I'm not that smart, right? I can't tell you how to fix it. I don't know what the solution would have been, but sure feels like it should have been handled after four or five weeks of it. Also this, and you're part of this, you know, with the playoffs, the way it started, you know, started off with the drivers that weren't even continuing in the playoffs, right? And they're winning. Good or bad? I know we can all agree that that was good for you. I'm saying for the sport, though, was, you know, what is that doing for the sport?

I mean, I'm non-playoff drivers. The playoff drivers not winning the first three or four, I mean, now four races, if you count the, Redick isn't even in the playoffs anymore. I like it. I'm a little biased, but I'm of the, the, opinion that we're all racing still. What's wrong with it? You know, if there's, if it was just about playoffs drivers and we wanted to make sure they won, then there would have been 16 cars on the racetrack the last four weeks and 12 at Texas. Yeah. You know, and that's, that's not us.

Like, we do the playoffs because it does build some excitement and it changes our aspect in what we do, but we're still not other sports. Our playoffs are not the same as other sports, and they don't need to be. Was there ever an opportunity you didn't take to go somewhere else? to drive for someone else? Nothing that I would say was better. It was really something that put a lot of effort or thought through.

I had a few options come at me and I remember I think through the years my first one. Sitting there with that Penske development deal and Ken had helped come up with that and David had come up with that Routtsch development. I'm sitting there looking at two.

piece of paper. I'm 16 years old trying to go professional auto racing. I was like, man, this is awesome. Like, get two of the biggest teams in our sports sitting here saying, look, we'll try. And, you know, they're both under promise and hopefully over-deliver pieces of paper right there. And Rouse was dominating at the time, you know. And Penske was in one of their roles. I was like, man, let's go somewhere we can win. And, you know, that was a little bit easier with David and Ken in that connection. It helped really build that up through the years. But it wasn't a whole lot of years afterwards where that script flipped real quick, right?

Penske was dominating and Roush started going through a lot of their struggles. And so that one was won for a little while, while I was getting kind of bounced around through some other teams sitting there like, man, that could have been a lot. a lot different early on. But now I say that, and there's no guarantees to any of that, right? I think at the time, Justin Algar may have been in the Penske development program at that point. And, you know, that was, it was just shorter fuses over there. You know, it was kind of, it was either hotter, it wasn't at the time. And if it wasn't immediate performance, it was like, you, you better hang on and figure something out. And so that's, it's been a thought at one point in my career.

but I love it over at RFK. Like I said, I've built so many friends within the shop from being in the shop, from being there for so long that I do have a great deal of loyalty to everybody there. And to Jack, a guy that in a sport that has not done a whole lot of driver development across a lot of other teams at the cup level anyway, that he was able to take that chance or willing to take that chance and get me through that program. and, you know, that was so cool to be able to get that win at Bristol

and finally show some of the fruits of the labor there after a lot of years. And I just, I really like where I'm at. I always have. Always figured that I would retire out of Rauch from a very early part of my career coming over. You, you, I know you're going to probably say riding a mower, but what are some of your hobbies and interests, and what I want to know is,

I know you get on the bush hog and everyone, in the middle of the week just to, because I know Daddy did that and I get it. But vacation, mountains, beach, what are we doing? If we're going somewhere, we're definitely not going to a beach. No beach. If it's up to me. Okay.

Yeah, up to you. If it's up to Emma, we're going to a beach. But she loves the mountains as well. I love the mountains. I like going up. What part? We've gone up to, pretty much all up and down the North Carolina mountain areas.

Haven't really gone out west much and really would love to make a trip out there. We in an RV? Probably try and take an RV up to like Montana, Yosemite, maybe, kind of cruise around. We'd love to... Your bit outdoorsy. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, we like to hunt, fish? I don't hunt, but I do like to fish.

You do like fish? Yeah, we do a lot of four-wheeling. You got one of them hot rod four-wheelers or the side of the sides? Yeah, we got a few players, the 1,000s. Yeah. We've got a few of those. Were y'all just getting ride for a couple hours? We'll go up to, like, West Virginia, Hatfield-McCoy trails.

We'll ride for days at a time, stay in cabins. Really? So I've been trying to get into that. Let's go. And my wife's showing some interests. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, because Kelly and LW do it from time to time. And you remember Tony Gibson and Roddy Chilters and all them. Yeah. We've done some rides with them. Yeah. Yeah. So you get in the side-aside. Mike, we're doing it.

If you want to go to it? I would have done it before I saw that Bristol footage of you and Amy. I can get in the car with you. What I do? Oh, damn, man, come on,

man, that was on the race track. She needs her own. Emma's got her own, yeah. Really? She loves driving. Oh, man,

I want my wife to ride with me. I want to be with someone. Yeah, you can. But you get intercoms in the room in the helmet. Just like. She can drive some. I'll ride out there.

Yeah. She's swap. I like being with, I want to do this with her. All right. Get you intercoms on, on headsets. I got you.

Yeah, we'll definitely have all the technology. Yeah. So when you get in the, you trailer them up to some place, right? Yep. Hop off, unload. You got your cabin right there, get settled in, and you take off riding for a day? Yeah, you try and get 100, 120 miles in a day. Just cruising.

Usually go to, you know, have a destination of mind. You try and find a lunch spot or something. Up there, they're really, really friendly to off-road vehicles. So you can ride into town, gas stations, convenience, stores, restaurants. Have you ever, you know, have you ever melt, ran into anybody who's not welcoming? No. Yeah. No. It's all good. Yeah. It's been really good. I didn't know, you know. If I was, if I lived up there and it's like,

golly, these freaking city people. They're all on four-wheelers too riding around with everybody. Does he come off as a city person though? I bet to them. To them, I might have. Maybe. Alberball. He got that Alberball on you. We're wearing his car heart shirt. Right. I don't know this city. We're taking them down to Tauadega this weekend. There's an old Army or Navy bunker about like three miles over.

It turns one and two there. And they turned in an off-road part. So we're going to go down. A bunker? It used to be bunkers. They're all over the place. It's just all grown up now. But right in they have these hillsides and there's just you open the doors.

They'll let you camp inside of them if you really wanted to sleep in a bunker without any power or lights or anything. It's a little strange. that this week I'm not camping. No, but you're I'm going to go ride this week. Yeah, I'm going to drive down Talladega.

My wife. Okay. Yeah, we're going to go down. Are you towing? Yeah, we'll drive them down day early and go down there and ride for a little bit. On Thursday?

Friday. Friday. Yeah. Interesting. Then maybe Saturday after on track activity. When did you finish up on Friday? The Exfinity qualls are at like

430, 5 o'clock, 530. So. So. What are you asking? He's wanting to go. I'm not asking nothing yet. Why don't she come Saturday? What is Saturday?

I got to do work. Well, you got to, yeah, you're going to be working there. Yeah. Okay. I'll have to check their hours on Friday and see how late they stay open. I might do a night ride. I can't be open late now if we can go in the morning. In the morning?

Yeah, like early. I'm not going to be there that early. Okay, all right, never mind. Let's go to a night ride. What's wrong in the night ride? Why don't we go to the mountains in North Carolina? You can stay up late. No, let's go somewhere you're familiar.

Let's do it. Yeah. So those things are expensive, though, man. They get a little pricey. Yeah. Do you need all of that? So what you need is a roll cage. You need a roll cage.

Put a roll cage on it. I mean, are you rolling the thing all the time? No. No, I've only rolled it three times. Okay. Three times. Three different units three times. Emma's rolled hers once, I think.

Slow rolls? They're all slow rolls. Yeah, goofing off, cutting donuts, drove into a mud puddle that was way deeper than I thought. I won't be doing doing that. I ain't trying to flip. Well, I wasn't trying to. I know, but.

Does that make you feel better? I've rolled. You don't want to go anymore, do you? I do. How fast do you go? Shoot, you can get up 45, 55 mile an hour in the fess? Why do you want to go that fast? So you can jump?

Jump? Yeah. What are you going to do? Sitesi? Yeah, I thought we were riding the woods. We are. As fast as possible. No.

I thought we, y'all don't go. I watched the videos. They're not going fast as possible. What do we ever do that slow? You're on property guys. goes stupid fast on your side by sides on your trails sonny go ride with him you haven't run run with sunny i know but those are my trails i know my trails i know my trails i know but i'm telling we know those roads up there pretty good now we've been up there enough yeah just get in the middle

you'll be okay all right get in the middle yeah you should ride in the middle seat not in the middle no right no really yeah put him in the middle seat in the jump seat there's not a middle say yeah shows what you know no no you don't even ride on the middle you don't even You don't even know what you know, Mike. Oh, yeah. Go up there Gibson and Rodney, and they do a really good job. They know their trails up there. They camp.

I'll take the regular side by side. Mike's going to have the bench. Okay. You're going to take your little... Triple seats. I ain't going to sit there being scared about taking a jump. If you take anything up there with a triple bench seat, you are going to get beat to death. Yeah.

Just fair warning. I don't mind rolling. Hey, where were you when you found out your name was Christopher? Reborn? The Christopher came back. Where were you? He was never Christopher right out of the gate. The redo.

It was Christopher from the very moment he showed up. The redo. Where were you when you found out that you had been... On the airplane? And who told you? On the airport. Twitter? Yeah, well, Twitter.

Yeah. And what was your reaction to it? I thought it was hilarious. I'd crack up by it. I didn't realize it gained so much steam as it did. But shoot, I mean... You know how it happened, right? So you said it was...

The first one was an accident, right? And then you just had to own it. Yeah. Might as well. So when you're in the booth and you're talking really, you know, you're thinking fast and you're trying to talk as fast as you're thinking, sometimes we'll say Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon, we'll get them confused. Yeah.

You'll say the wrong one. And so we were talking, I think Christopher Bell and Chris Bisher were having an equally similar day, maybe running within a few cars of each other. And so we were in conversation and maybe had just mentioned Christopher Bell just 30 seconds before, and I go to mention his name, and I said Christopher Bisher. And I thought, oh,

now everybody on social media is going to give me a hard time because they do. Anytime you kind of slip up there, like, oh, he messed up. He messed up right there. And so I thought, all right, I might say it again.

I'm going to say it again. So I kept saying it, and I thought, well, this will be fun. So I wonder if I can get some of the, so I'm over in, this is at Watkins Glen. I think when this happened. Rich, was it Richmond?

Richmond. It was Richmond. It was Richmond. So I'm in my booth. I'm in a different booth. And Steve and Rick are in their booth. And so I thought to myself, I'm sitting there thinking, I'm like, Burton's probably pretty annoyed.

I easily annoy him. And I'm thinking, man, I wonder if I can say it enough to actually get it into Rick Allen's head to where he will slip up and say it himself. And so now I've got to say it more. And so I'm thinking, you know, you're out there racing and I'm like, he's probably fine with this. This is new. Yeah. Christopher, Chris, it doesn't matter, right?

By the way, y'all have a really, really great social media. Yes, we do. Organ, uh, person. Yeah. And, um, and they were, they're fun to follow. You know, there's only a handful of, uh, cup organization accounts that really got it going on. And they do. They got the energy.

They do. The energy's good. And so they're having fun with it. But I was really. wanting to get Rick to accidentally say it. And this weekend... I heard you got them. Burton.

Burton, okay. Oh, did he? Burton said Christopher Bush. And I was like, yes. I mean, you know, it's the little things. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes. Your name got turned into a drinking game, basically, that we could do a

podcast, right? I kind of, I had, I didn't, I felt a little bad about it, but then when I heard that your mom was happy, I was like, then I'm no, and he was like, hey, mom's happy. I'm happy. I'm like, well, all right. Perfect. Yeah, roll with it. Yeah, mom was so mad at me when I shortened it,

probably like third or fourth grade. I told her, it's like, you made, you gave me such a long name. Just takes long to write. Yeah, everyone was done with the test, and I was just filling in the bottom of the date at the top corner. I was like, this is ridiculous.

That's why I don't sign my name to Ellen Hart Jr. That Earnhardt part is like ridiculous. Yeah, it's got a bunch of extra letters in it that doesn't need. I just, yeah, so I shortened it, and I kind of regret it for a little bit. So, well, he said it was perfect.

I was like, mom's happy. I was like we get to play along for a little bit and the people that cracked me up were like does Chris Buster know he's going to have to legally change his name? I was like, yeah, that's going to be okay. That's fine. That's my name. Yeah, not going to have to really change anything.

No issue here. I say I already was a big fan of yours just as a human being after, you know, watching you go through that Xfinity championship and beating us there, I got a lot of appreciation for you, but we're at Watkins Glen and he walks out. I think TJ was texting me.

He's like, man, Chris wants to come out to pit road and you all have a picture by the car because he's got Christopher Bush or Busher on the top of the car, right? And so I was like, really? I was like, yeah, I'll be out there. I'm going to be honestly, man. When I was a driver and they're like, hey, man, you know, can you do X, Y, and Z?

I'm like, if it ain't a driver's meeting it. I ain't going to be there. right Robbie Gordon wants a picture over there yeah yeah can they meet me in intros I'll be there

right right before I get in the car that's okay and every I thought every drive was like that and so I'm standing out there and I'm thinking you know surely he's going to get

preoccupied or get busy and just so many things and the you know there's people everywhere out there on pit road sure enough off in the distance here comes Chris be bopping along. I'm like, damn it, he's coming. I worked my way on down to the car, man, and we stood there and took a picture. And I was like, it was like, man, that's cool.

I can sneak around a little easier than you can, though. I just appreciate it. I can kind of point in duck some. I appreciate that. I'm going to tell you, man, the, you know, this is, you are important to, you're important in such a huge asset to the sport, because we need versatility in our personalities, right? And we've got that. We've got, you know, Denny is Denny. No one's like Denny. No one's like Kyle Bush.

No one's like Martin Triggs Jr. They're all different in their own way, right? And it's, you know, we just got to get everybody out there so they can get to know them, right? You are, when fans like to look back in time and go, man, I really thought that, they were really relatable. Or I like this guy because I could see myself talking to him and having a beer with him or whatever. I don't know that there's anybody,

not many drivers in the sport that are guy next door than you. I think that you, to me, now your elite talent win cup races, but also I could see myself running into you on an aisle in Lowe's later today and not be a bit surprised. I'll probably be there today actually Right You know I could see myself Walking into the grocery store

And oh hey Chris Or you know Anywhere And you just come across as the Every man That's sort of I don't know Whether you

You probably You put no effort in that But that's just who you are And so And you feel that role right Someone has to feel that role for us Somebody has to be that guy next door

that everybody can say, man, I got a buddy just like him. And so I think that's what I like a lot about you, is that you're grounded, really humble, not assuming. And there's not a lot of guys like that. A lot of guys always joke, man, when I was a driver and all most of these other guys, their egos are massive, right? And shoot, my was. And there's some of the other ones that are out of control.

But you seem to, you got to. You got to have all types, right? Like, it's important that we have all types, and you got to see it. But, yeah, I just redneck that got to go racing for a living out of some good fortune, some hard work along the way. So, I mean, I try to stay grounded, try to stay normal. I still do a lot of the same things. I'm talking about, after Brist, a lot of people asked me how crazy the week was.

I'm like, well, yeah, it was really, really busy Monday. and Tuesday, by Wednesday, kind of tapered down by Thursday. We're sitting out there on tractor mowing grass again. You know, like right back to what needs to be done out there. And I don't know, I just enjoy being, well, normal is kind of a subjective term. But trying to be a little bit normal. Well, man, I appreciate it. Do you know your spotter, Mike Herman Jr.?

How long have y'all been working together? So Herm was when he was spotting the cup car for, Ricky, he was doing the 60th Infinity car for me. So Herm was our spotter when we won in 15, the championship in 15. I'm sure he shared with you the connection to the Earnhardt family that he has. So I know he is from the Canapolis area, but he is not really dove into the trenches. His dad was a policeman in Canapolis and also would go on the weekends with dad and his bush car. That, you know, in the early 80s, Mike,

Junior has tons of pictures of them in Victory Lane with his dad. He was, you know, signboard guy or windshield guy or clean-the-grill guy. He was that sort of seven, six-man that had that odd, important job, but it may be different every stop. But he was there every weekend. And then when I got in my very first competitive race in a go-car at Sanford, North Carolina, it was in Mike Herman Jr.'s backup. Really?

My dad had bought that cart from Mike Sr., and I got a picture of my cart and Mike Jr.'s up on stands, and we're sitting in them with our dads behind us. Yeah. Probably from 82 or 83. How about that? A long, a long time ago. So, Herman's very humble, too.

He doesn't like to divulge into a whole lot, but now he's a racer through and through now. He eats this up and he does a great job. No, I hadn't gotten much of those stories. I'm going to have to really dive into it a little bit more here. I'm sure he's got some really incredible stories. Yeah. Just some experiences that he's had is himself.

You know, I mean, he was a racer. Yes. A driver. And ground really hard to get his opportunities and make them happen. Last thing I want to ask you about is our T-shirt. I hit you up and said, hey, man, we need a T-shirt. Yeah. there's no Christopher

Busher shirt as I know, right? There's not. No. And so I've seen some artwork. Somebody showed me some artwork. I've seen some this weekend. And I've had some input on what I thought it should be.

But in my opinion, man, it ought to just say Christopher Busher and have a car or whatever. Nothing more than that. Just be super simple. One time, one time only, right? There you go. One shirt. One shirt on.

That way it's exclusive. People will say, hey, man, I need one of those because it's the only one that's going be. Yeah. And you said, would I wear it? You damn right, I'd wear it.

Okay. Yeah. I'll send your cobble shirt over there. Yeah. Damn, I wear a different shirt every show. We've got hundreds and hundreds of shows in the book. Yep.

I've definitely noticed the wardrobe cycles through. So yeah, yeah, we'll get some, we'll get them things made and we'll get one to you. Who designed it? Is it the Rouse side or you're, did you have someone designed? I think there's a, there's a, collaboration.

Is that what it is? The word. That's right. Senton. Yeah, I got you. Somebody needs to do it. Well, I think that they're doing it, and they just sent it over and said, hey, you're cool with this. And I was like, man, that's great.

I'm pretty pumped. It's really going to happen. If you're good to go, I think they're getting closer. Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait. I think that's a cool thing, man. Absolutely.

We appreciate cutting up with us along the way. I've had a really fun time messing with people online, too, because that's a – I don't get on very often, but every now and I like to – it helps when you have good – days right when the mood's good you sit on the plane after that was Richmond and yeah we were really close there and it was just it was a good day and you get to uh to have better uh better conversations at that point for sure so made it a little more fun it's good to take advantage of that uh anytime you can have a little fun with the fans out there and engage uh especially after those good runs they're also great to they're they're there also to lift you up when things aren't so good but uh man

i appreciate you coming today this has been a lot of fun of sit down and talk about it. We covered a lot of things. Got to learn a lot about you. I appreciate you diving into some of the current event stuff with us and giving everybody your opinions there. And you don't have much racing left the rest of this year, man. The season is coming to an end quickly.

Real quick. Yeah. It's flown by. So, yeah, just a, what, half a dozen left here a little over. So you got Talladega coming up. Got Taladega, which we've had circled since really the beginning of the year, right? We knew we'd be good there. Got Martinsville coming.

Coming. Another short track where we've been able to hit the ground running, a roval. So road course has been strong. I really were at a point now where I'm really proud to say that we're not, we don't have racetracks that we just don't feel competitive at anymore. That's great. Yeah. Good deal, man. We're going to be pulling for you. That's right. Christopher Busher on the Dell Jr. Download. Thank you. Thank you. You know, Mike, whether I've been in the garage, right, as a driver or in the studio as a member of the media, the biggest lesson I've learned over the. the years is that we are all better off with an ally. A friend, a partner. My favorite part of the download has always been the opportunity it gives me to connect

with such a wide range of people. They love racing as much as I do, and it means so much to me that when we leave the guest segment, I leave it with a feeling that I can call each and every guest on the download The True Ally. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the show and the entire Dirty Moe Media team. Hey Mike, we got a lot of credit for having such a great dirty air segment last week. Because of you. Yeah. Come on, man. Yeah. No, it was good. Yeah. All this stuff you said. I mean, it was education, man. All right. We are live on YouTube. Hey, everybody. None of it applied

over to this week, though, apparently. Nobody listened to you that mattered. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in to the Ask Junior part of the show. Ask Junior brought to you back, Xfinity. You guys have sent all your questions in. into Xfinity Racing on Twitter, and we really appreciate it. Thanks to it's Finney for everything they do for us and for everything they do for our sport. I know that everybody probably doesn't realize how much their involvement matters, but it makes our sport better and makes it a lot more enjoyable for all of us. So we got to appreciate them.

It's been a fun morning, and I know you guys got a lot of great questions, so let's get right to them, Hannah. Well, we'll go ahead and just kick off Ask Junior here with a little bit of a live reaction because people are actually already bringing it up in our YouTube chat was just announced that Jimmy Johnson is retiring. Oh. We'll not be racing full time on anything whatsoever, potentially going abroad for two years. You know, what are your thoughts on that with losing someone essentially here on the American side of things is such a legendary racer?

I think it's awesome. I think that he's got, so I've been talking to Jimmy a lot and, and, you know, I, you know, This is the thing. We're not going to lose Jimmy. Jimmy's going to race. Jimmy's going to keep racing. Jimmy's going to do Jimmy things. Jimmy's going to, you know, you saw him over at Goodwood,

willing to mow cars like a maniac. Jimmy's going to do those kind of things and maybe run into 24 hours of Daytona again, maybe run Lamont. He may drive that NASCAR cup car at LaMalle. We don't know, but I expect that he is going to pop up. If I were you, if you don't already follow him on Instagram, and all his social media, he's going to be sharing with everybody, everything that he's going to be up to over the next several years. And that'd be a great way to sort of vicariously live out whatever he's doing.

And he's always into something, you know. And I'm entertained by Jimmy as much off the track or as much today as I ever was when he was a driver. and so my feeling is man I'm not losing anything I'm actually more curious as to what this opens up for him creatively and how he can you know take us some places that he wants to go and he'll by all means he'll be taking us he's very very comfortable sharing everything that he does in his life and so I'm pretty excited about it to be honest with you I felt like that I wish things would have better for him performance-wise on the IndyCar side, but it speaks to how difficult it is and how tough it is. And, you know, Jimmy probably isn't the same driver. You used to be 10, 15 years ago. We all know father times undefeated.

And he's going to move on to some new challenges. So I'm looking forward to that. Hey, you know, we got race cars in this shop. I love for him to come run a race with us. I'm sure he's not done driving stock cars. I'm sure there's a little bit in there left of, I'd like to try it one more time, or I miss this racetrack I used to love racing at.

Come talk to us, Jimmy. And I'm sure he's going to, he may end up in that Project 91 car. You don't know what he's going to do. This dude is a maniac. And although he's, you know, he's my age, he's still a kid at heart and got a lot of, he's got a lot of spunk, you know, left in him.

And so I expect to see him pretty busy. Yeah, he's running LaMaw this weekend in that 48 Action Express car, and he credited a lot of it to being his kids. His kids are starting to grow up, you know what I mean, and spending time with them. Hannah, did you get the feeling Dale already knew this news? Yeah, I got the feeling he did. Which is pretty standard, if we're being honest.

I was shocked. He's like, I'm happy. And I'm like, wait a second. Well, you haven't got this already. You'll be where I am in a couple weeks. Hey, at least he didn't do that fun thing. Oh, boy. I'm saying I was where you were a couple weeks ago.

Shocked. Yeah, he got the news a couple weeks ago. So you'll be feeling this good about it. You knew this for a couple weeks and didn't leak it? I was going to say, at least he didn't do the whole thing. That's not my story to tell. He didn't tweet about it, so we're good. And I mean, you know, the guy might change his mind or something.

I don't be out there. I already made a mistake with releasing Kyle's news. I don't learn to listen. Well, I'm happy for Jimmy if you're happy for Jimmy. Yeah. All right, this next one kind of actually, you kind of mentioned it, but this, well, Doug Perk goes, if you could take your fifth Xfinity car, the number 88, to a race and put a driver in from an underfunded or lower tier team, whether it be truck, Xfinity, Cup, who would you like see get an opportunity?

Probably Kyle Weatherman. Oh, wow. Yeah, I think what he's been able to do in Jesse Woogie's car is pretty impressive. And I just think he's got some good pace and speed, and it'd be interesting. interesting to see how he might do. Let's see. You got anybody on top of mine? I doubt this is what they're talking.

I want to see Corey LaJoy in big equipment. Yeah, that's a great. Hey, dude, that's your dream. I think he's good. Yeah. Yeah, I think Corey in a Hendrik car would be cool, you know, that type of equipment would be interesting. But who was the boy Bailey, Kurt. Curry that ran

Monster trucks No no no what was the boy that ran Bristol in the four Dang it he's in the Xfinity series Bailey Curry yeah I was right So he had a really really good run At Bristol last week

In the four car For JD Motor Sports And he ran pretty good in a truck race I think So those when you see guys Do those kind of things Stefan Parsons Has had a couple good weeks in that 45.

That, when you, people recognize that. People see that. I see it. And so, and I see, I see the comments on social media about it. You know, that support,

like, when I, when I watch it happen, and then I see other people feeling my feelings, I'm like, okay, yeah, this is a real thing. You know,

that, I need to, you know, that's how I, you know, that's how you remember those runs by these guys long after it happened. is by, you know, I guess getting that affirmation from other people that feel the same way.

So there's two or three runs by a couple guys just in the recent month that have got some people curious about their ability and what they might be able to do in some real cars. From Cole Dutton, he said, when you switched to Hendrick, you started using a small steering wheel. During your final season, it looks like you switched back to a larger steering wheel. Can you explain the different wheel sizes and how that benefits you? I think that we start, I believe used to, I believe used to, way back in the buddays we ran, I think a 16 inch. Then we went to 15, then 14. The steering boxes went from 12 to 1 to 10 to 1 to 8 to 1.

They got faster. So, you know, I would look over and go, what's Jimmy doing? What's he got on his car? Oh, that looks small. I don't know if I want to run that small, but I'll go. I'll go a little smaller. I'll meet in the middle. And then you go, we were, we had the setup sheets from,

from Stuart Haas because they were Chevrolet at the time. And, you know, the four car with Harvick was flying everywhere. And man, he's running an 8 to 1 box. We ain't running but a 10 to 1. Well, let's try it. Okay, throw it on. I don't feel any different. But if he's faster, we're going to keep it.

Those are the reasons why those happen. You don't really have, there's not like a, it's not something that you're doing or you're thinking that's driving it. It's what you're seeing in the garage. And if somebody comes to the racetrack with, you know, and I'll use this example, it's silly, but just to get under Jeff Burton's skin, if somebody showed up with white wheels and just won every race, everybody, everybody would be at the racetrack the next week with white wheels. you know it's you know we watch everything that's going on and when you see something you think oh maybe that's quicker maybe that's better maybe i need to try it let me try it um i did not go down and back up i think i went to a 15 on the road courses i would run a really really small

wheel like a 14 but that's just because you you know you really want on a road course left and right you want the car to drive like a go cart so you you get that steering as fast as you can um And then, you know, on the bigger tracks, you want that steering to slow down a little bit, at least in your hands. You want your hands to slow down. And so you get a little bit bigger on the steering wheel, so your hands are smoother. The box and all the stuff under the hood can be quick and dardy as much as the crew wants to make that. But the actual movement of your hands is kind of what a driver, I think. I would, and to be honest with you, I would hate the next-gen car.

because of that rack steering and how quick it is. I'm watching them drivers, man, and they go in the corner, they only move their hands. It's just like this. Yeah, it's like, ugh. And then, no, like, I need to be, I need to be driving that thing. What the hell?

Do they run quickners in them or they just have that fastest steering box? I think that it's that brand. Really? You know, it's like, hey man, here's your steering. Four to one. Good luck. Fort one. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, way, way. This is way too fast. Sorry. Everybody's got the same thing. You'll get it. No, thank you.

All right. This last question here, a couple people have actually kind of chimed up about it. But obviously, an incredible season that Noah has been having and the run that he's been going on. Do you know where the Waffle House tradition has come from? And what is your go-to Waffle House order? Well, I haven't been to Waffle House in a long, long time. But I think that, you know, Noah and his guys are going to, you know, they're going to have fun and they're going to have their traditions. And I think that's a great idea for them to develop traditions and things that they enjoy. It's great to be able to build camaraderie amongst your team. After that race, this is a fun story. We were standing in Victor Lane.

And I forgot that Noah was going to race cup on Sunday. the next day. Yeah. And so I'm standing there and I'm like, hey, man, Noah's like, man, we're going to leave the track. Only he got the cowboy hat. I got to start over. So we're in Victor Lane, and he's got a cowboy hat on. The guy brings over a stack of five cowboy hats and says, all right, Noah, pick your size.

Noah's, too, too, okay, this is my hat. And I went over there and I said, hey, man, can I borrow one of those? I just want it for the picture. And they're like, I don't know. and I was like just give me one of them one of them go seven and three eights I'm just going to bar it for five minutes and the guy's like and the guy's looking around at his co-workers going is this okay anybody know who this guy is and asking for the hat exactly and I was like okay all right they finally one of the ladies is like yeah yeah it's just lame hat so I take the hat and I walk back over there and I'm like holding the hat I'm just going to put it on real quick for this photo just with no in the trophy and we're standing there and I's And Noah says, one of the guys, I told the team guys, I said, man, I got to give this hat back. They don't want me to have it.

They really didn't want to give it to me. And the guy's like, here, I'm going to take off running with it. I'll just run to the holler with it. And I was like, no, no, no. And Noah's like, I'm going to take all y'all to the strip mall across the street, and I'll get all y'all hats here in a minute. After this, after we're done here, we're going to leave the racetrack. And then we'll go to Cole, Swindale, at Billy Bob's tonight.

And they had already pulled. They had already planned that, right? And so I said, wait, you're going to see Cole? And he goes, yeah, yeah, we're all going to see Cole tonight. And I said, well, hell, let's FaceTime Cole. So I pulled my phone out and I FaceTime Cole's going to down. I was like, hey, Cole. I was like, here's the winners, man.

I was like, you got to drag him on stage. If you don't drag him on stage, we're going to be really disappointed. They're going to bring the trophy. And they did. They took the trophy and hopped up on stage in front of everybody and got a selfie with the entire crowd. I got the hat back over there to the guy, so he didn't get in trouble. I got my picture.

It was a fun little celebration. And I could tell when we were sitting in the media center, Noah was doing everything he could to try to get out from driving that cup card on Sunday. Because he was like, man, I want to go party. You want to go celebrate. And I was sitting there thinking, man, I would be feeling the exact same thing. I'd be like, hell with this cup race, man. I'm going to go to Billy.

Bob. We'll see the sun come up. You know what I mean? Oh, gosh. You probably gave that poor intern, because it was probably an intern doing the hats. A scare. He's like, my one job is to make sure these five hats get back.

And how do I tell Junior no? I'll be honest. If you're worried at all about Noah's focus and commitment, I mean, to have won the race, take the team to Billy Bobbs for a Cole Swindale concert, and make it back in one piece and then race the next day,

500 miles and 100 degree temperatures, the kids focused and got all his priorities, at least in a much better order than they might have been three or four years ago. It's a good on him. Perfect. Well, that is it for this week's Ask Junior. All right, y'all. Thank you all for tuning in and supporting us. It's been a busy, busy weekend, and we got a big show for you a lot of opinions, and I'm sure you'll have some of you agreeing and some of you disagreeing, and all of you is going to have some solutions, hopefully, for some of the things we need to straighten out. but and thank you to Xfinity and XFi. Great service.

If you haven't checked it out, if you need, you know, if you're kind of curious about how much better that service might be, I'm a customer and I can tell you won't be disappointed. Thank you, Exfinity for everything you do for us.

So we'll see you next week on the Dell Jr. Download. All right, man, that's a great show, Mike. A lot to talk about. I don't think we really answered everything, though, man. This is not going to straighten itself out just on one podcast. Yeah, I guess we'll have to come back for episode 402. Yeah, 402 next.

week. Do we have a guest yet for that one? We do. We don't have to announce it, but we do. Yeah. Can we give it like a hint? Yeah. Not a racer. Might have been in baseball. Whoa. Okay. There you go. See if you guys can figure it out. You got a week. I think the first person that we see that has the correct answer tagging Dirty Moe Media, we're going to send them a Travis or a Carson Quoppel t-shirt. Oh, wow. I'm wearing one today. There you go. So we'll find them a Carson Quoppel t-shirt. Quaple. Quaple. So, yeah, tag Dirtymoe Media

and the guest that you think we're going to have. And the first one that we see, that's the one that's going to get a T-shirt. There you go. There you go. All right, I hope everybody enjoyed it. 401 is in the books. Thanks Chris Busher for coming by. And hope you guys enjoyed it. We'll see you next week. Check out Dirtymo Media. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok,

and Instagram.