The Dale Jr. Download - 406 - DIRTY AIR - DJD Lands Monster Guests; Dale Jr. Lands Big-Catch Sponsor; Austin Hill Lands Punch (Ouch)

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Dale Jr. dropped all sorts of news on this week’s Dirty Air segment of The Dale Jr. Download podcast. First, he elaborated on his late model plans for Florence Motor Speedway’s South Carolina 400 on Nov. 19, including the paint scheme he will carry. Hint, we hope you like Dale Earnhardt throwbacks because this black-and-gold No. 3 will trigger some wonderful memories. Dale Jr. also announces he will be running an additional NASCAR Xfinity Series race in 2023.In Ask Jr, Dale Jr. answers a handful of fan-sourced questions, including: Should owners have more say in NASCAR? Do you make a Halloween costume that conceals your identity? What do you think of Parker Kligerman’s recent announcement that he’s returning to full-time NXS racing? After driving to Martinsville with him, how well would you rate Truex as a road-trip buddy? What do you make of Austin Hill’s punch of Myatt Snider? Finally, Dale Jr. reveals upcoming guests on the Download to finish out the 2023 season. One is probably Dirt Super Late Model’s biggest star and has been for three decades; the other you never saw coming. It’s OK, we didn’t either. BZF has entered the chat! Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mode Media. They're getting ready to take on this racetrack for 312 laps. To determine a champion in the Cup series. Vernon Edwards, first and second winner. He's the championship. This time he's an older driver, and he's going to become a three-time NASCAR Sprickup champion. Tony Stewart wins in.

Perfect season. Mark Triggs Jr. The races of the season for the broken. and a broken foot after an accident at Daytona. He threw as much pain and had as much perseverance as 30-year-old, the 24-year-old from Dawsonville, Georgia, is about to join his father, Awesomeville, an elite company. Chase Elliott is a NASCAR Cup Series champion.

Cup Series champion. Hey, everybody, welcome back again to another episode of the Dale Jr. download here in the Bojangles Studio, your host, Dellen Hart Jr., with my co-host, Mike. How's going, Mike? Going great, but you guys heard some great comments yesterday on the download from Steve LaTarch. We previewed the Phoenix race. We talked about all the Martinsville stuff.

Pretty awesome to have him in here. I love his insight, man. Man. So I got an opinion about things, and most of the time, me and Steve have about the same opinion. He will have a little bit deeper of a thought than I do. I really don't. It's always fun. Every time there's anything controversial or interesting going on in a sport,

I cannot wait to talk to him about it because I know that he's going to have an additional thought that I haven't considered. And it's from those years of just being so involved in the garage area as a crew chief and seeing it from his perspective that I've never experienced. But he's great to have on the show. I love to have him on here more for things like that to really talk current events. But before we do that, we want to get into some dirty air. brought to you by filter time filter time.com is a subscription business and i'm an owner and a customer

if you need your filters replaced in your hvacc like everybody in the world who owns one uh let us smell them to you that way you got to worry about it when they come to your doorstep you can change them out throughout the old ones and um no contract so you can cancel any time you won't just let us a try man please please let us do it i assume everyone in this room right now is a customer i won't even ask Better be. Bass Pro Shop News. Yeah. This is a big deal, man.

So I announced that I'm going to run the late model stock car at Florence on the 19th of November. Well, I'm going to race a Bass Pro Shop's throwback scheme, right? If you remember the gold car that Dad drove in the 1998 Winston All-Star Race, well, that's the one. This little late-modal stock car is going to look like that, all right? It's going to have my name on the roof, and I'm going to race it in Florence. and I'm going to go there and qualify and attempt to race it. Anyhow. I won't even get, don't even make me go there.

The following weekend, you know, I hate to, you know, you make that kind of a statement, and then when you go and don't make the race for whatever reason, you blow up or just run slow, everybody goes, hey, you listen to this. He said he was going to race. He predicted. He's going to do it. You can't leave them open, man. You can't leave yourself open.

You've got to have your guard up at all times, Mike, in this world. Well, listen, we will say good luck attempting to qualify. for that Florence race in that sweet-looking car that you'll be driving. All right. What's cool about this is the following weekend, Josh Barry will run the exact same car in the Turkey Classic at Southern National on the 26th. Okay. I wanted to run that race.

I did, but it is on Thanksgiving, and I cannot race on Thanksgiving, y'all. No. No, no. Well, it's not technically on Thanksgiving, but damn it. I did want to run, and, you know, of course, they can run their race when they want to run it, but it just made it difficult for me. another cup driver that would have been thrilling for people to see race there that couldn't pull it off that wanted to go, all because of the Thanksgiving weekend. My wife's like, man,

you can run that other race on the 19th, but not this one. Anyhow, not to hijack this announcement, me and Josh running the same paint scheme in back-to-back weekends, throwback Bass Pro Shop, 1998 Winston All-Star Race that Dad drove. I'm pumped about that. It's a good little car. It's already wrapped. already seen it. I can't wait to show and let people see it. They're going to love it. This does not mean that the sun drop car is never coming back. Okay, good. Okay. Sundrop car still still out there, still out there. Still going to show up somewhere. All right. The other big part, probably possibly the biggest part of this announcement is that the Bass Pro Shops component in Junior Motorsports Xfinity system is all going to Josh Barry's car next year. So Bass Pro Shops will sponsor the number eight for.

11 races for Josh Barry next year. I'm excited about that because it's a new partner for Josh. It's a new person, a new entity that can learn who Josh is, get excited about what we're trying to do with Josh, and help him obviously reach that ultimate goal of getting into the Cup series. The other thing that's exciting for me is that Josh will learn a tremendous amount about the outdoors, conservation, fishing, hunting, and it will be. be fun for me to watch him gain new experiences to see what really piques his interest, what he really loves and enjoys. Maybe he's some deep sea fishing.

You never know where he might find some joy in all of this. And I know that Noah probably wasn't exposed to that very much. No way. But he jumped in with both feet and learned a lot about what Bass Pro Shops is involved in and really wrapped his arms around that whole partnership, and they loved Noah. Yeah. And I think if Josh goes in with that same sort of engaging attitude

and really open-minded to experiencing new things, and it's going to be a lot of fun for him. So I'm thrilled for that. There's another piece to this announcement. Wow. All right. A lot of layers. I'm going to run a Bass Pro Shop's car in the Xfinity Series next year as well.

So instead of the Helmand's race, I will run an additional race. So next year, there'll be two events that I'll go to. Okay. We're on our way to a full schedule in the Xfinity series for you. One race at a time. Maybe in 40 years we'll get back to a full schedule. That's right. One race at a time.

There's another layer to this partnership. All right. Bass Pro Shops will sponsor Carson Quapples, late model stock for 20 races in 2000. That's basically the entire cars tour that we are champions of this year with Carson. Carson is a rising talent up the Chevy Pipeline. He has the it factor. He's as good as Josh Barry.

Younger, got a lot more time to really gain even more knowledge, get even better. Josh will tell you. Josh has helped him transition into our late model. And obviously Carson races his own pro and his super late model with his father. So just a great pedigree. He is a great, great project driver for Cup teams and Xfinity owners like ourselves to be paying attention to. He will be ready really soon. But anyway, anyhow, Bass Pro Shops is going to partner with us on our late model stock program.

They will also be introduced to Carson Quaple and the talent he is throughout the 2023 season. So there it is. I'm going to run a late model stock race at Florida. Josh will then run the following week on the 26th of November in Southern National, the last, pretty much the last two big late model stock races in the area. Josh will be sponsored by Bass Pro Shops for 11 races in the Xfinity Series in 2003 on the number eight car for Junior Motorsports. I will run an additional Xfinity Series race for Bass Pro Shops in the number 88.

Bass Pro Shops will sponsor Carson Quappell on the late model stock car for Junior Motorsports to defend their cars tour championship in 2003. And Dale, I'm assuming that that race that you're going to run is to be determined. Like if anybody's going away, where is he going to run? We don't know that yet, I'm assuming, right? Well, I do know where it is, but I'm not telling you today. We're not going to announce it today. No.

All right. That'll be for the next announcement. That's right. All right. Fair enough. I know 99% sure where I'm racing next year. Okay. It's two tracks in the second half of the season during our NBC half. get to track.

All right. And that way, you know, instead of running in the off season, my off season, the first half of the year, I'm going to be doing a lot more work. I was really busy this year, busier than I anticipated being, and I need to really kind of make sure that I'm keeping some time clear for my family. Understood that. Well, we'll look forward to whenever you can announce that. One last thing I wanted to tell everybody, this is for you die cast collectors,

and I'm one, and I'm excited about this little piece of news myself. If you were looking forward to buying a diecast of the sundrop late model stock car and were somewhat disappointed with the aged tooling of that car, we basically used an old Xfinity tool or cast and tried to do our best to make it look somewhat like our sundrop late model stock car. We raced in Old Wholesboro. Well, through the interest in that diecast and through some social media comments and push by our fans and collectors, Lionel is going to add a new tool to its online store so that the late model stock car will look like a true late model stock car. So that car is going to get recast. We're using some actually some of the scan from irasing that they most recently did. anyways we're going to create a new tool new cast for the late model stock car for the die cast and

I believe what size is this Mike that's the 124 124 and then the 164 as well as getting a new cast okay uh so we'll be able to produce a sun drop late model stock car will produce this bass pro shops late model stock car and any other late model stock car that we want to produce of any other driver we'll have that opportunity with this new cast I'm excited about that I know that the you know when we're talking to when everybody listening isn't a die cast collector but the ones of you that are and myself included look at our table here uh i can't wait to get my hands on a couple of those uh that are legit late model stock cars so that's a cool little part of that comment or announcement yeah i remember this being a thing that you were a little embarrassed by and and for good reason i mean

for those that don't remember don't know they they put out the uh you know tried the the pre-order sales for the sun drop late model but it was on an Xfinity series car. It was like the sun drop paint scheme on Xfinity Series car. As you would expect, people called us out on social media. And you did not like that. You saw like, why is this on an Xfinity series car? I was sitting in your office when they brought the sample to me.

And I knew it right away. I said, oh, man, this sucks. We're not going to have a legit late model stock shaped body or diecast. And I knew that people, when they saw this, they were going to go, man, I'm not excited about that. Don't blame you. I don't blame you. And that's why, you know, we've got Lionel's attention, and you guys obviously got Lionel's attention, and they are going to make it right. They're going to create a cast, a new cast, a new tool, so that we can have the proper die casts

to put in our case at home and bring a couple to this table. It's going to be exciting to be able to do that, man, because I've got all these, we got all these die casts in here, but I'm also, I also got two towers at home of several different cars. Other cars strewn across my house in different places. A lot of die cats in my storage, but I'm excited to be able to get some of these little late model cars since I'm only running a select few races for however long we run them, but it'll be cool.

Listen, the Bass Pro Shop's late model is going to be one that... I wish we could show it. I mean, yeah, I would love... That's going to be on this table. We're going to be buying those things. So, yeah, that's a good tool to happen. I can't wait to reveal what it... actually looks like sitting on the shop floor.

Yeah. Because the pictures I saw got me pumped, man. I'm excited. We'll just stay tuned to your social media because I'm sure as soon as you do that, we'll be watching and you'll put that out there. We have two shows left for this season. And we have two fabulous guests to be able to finish the season strong. One of those is a guy that y'all have been asking for for a long time.

and he was a bit reluctant, I believe, to come on. Hannah knows a lot about this because she's been in contact with that world. And so Scott Bloomquist is going to come on the show. Hannah, talk about that a little bit, how that kind of was back and forth and what we expect when Scott comes into the room. Yeah, I know that, you know, you guys mentioned it. That's someone that a lot of people had asked for, because even if you're a pavement fan or in any discipline of racing,

Scott Bloomquist is just kind of a name synonymous with dirt racing. So I was at World 100, and, you know, we talked about the fact that he'd been approached about coming on beforehand. And I work a lot with him in the World of Outlaws and told him, you know, you've got a story that needs to be heard for the good, the bad, the ugly. And he, you know, said that now is the time. Like, his career is starting to kind of take a backseat as a driver. He owns the chassis company and said now it's kind of, you know, time to tell the stories because there's some wild ones, you know, and they're at this table, you know, you put away. rumors you put you know you approach those and i think this is a great platform for him to kind of tell all so so there is definitely a checkered past we'll say and you think he's going to be willing

to be you know completely transparent about it yeah well that was that was part of the deal right you know is he listens to the show they listen to it and he knows how it goes he listened to the mayfield episode i said that's going to be a great one for you to go listen back to and kind of so he knows how you guys approach these subjects and uh and i said said, you know, don't, don't give us the run around here. And he said, nope, that's not the plan. Like, if I'm going to, if I'm going to tell these stories, I'm going to tell these stories to Dillenhart Jr. I said, well, good. We've got the platform for it.

Awesome. I'm looking forward to that. I've long admired his career and sort of his persona. He had a personality, right? For better or worse, like it or not, you know, we all connect or gravitate to we love to hate certain people we love to love certain people and then there's there's a vast majority that are in it we're indifferent right and that's you know if you have a

you know if you have a series full of drivers that do nothing for you man it is tough to stay plugged in but as long as Scott was out there racing I was interested in where he finished how he ran what he was up to where he was racing, why he wasn't racing, followed his career in a way where you sort of stay captivated

about a certain individual, right? Yep. I never really had that sort of connection to many racers out there. It'll be interesting to meet him. I've never actually met him in terms of like a formal hello. And so it's going to be kind of like meeting one of your heroes, but also meeting him in a vulnerable time in his life, right? Wow, that's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, He's sort of intimidating to me. I don't know if they, because he was also the very first late model race I ever attended. I was in high school, and in Bloomquist was the draw, Cleveland, Tennessee. Bloomquist was the draw. He's who everybody was talking about. And I had to know more about who this Bloomquist was.

His car was just different, just rad, right? I mean, like that zero with the, you know, I mean, like, it's just different. And he was this figure that was bigger than life. So, and then he won the race. So it's like Bloomquist, wow, him being at this table will be something special. And I don't even know what to think about in terms of prep for it, but we're going to have to get through it all, right? Yeah, I mean, it's legendary. We go to the racetracks in the middle of nowhere that Bloomer's not even running.

And you can spot 10 to 15 Bloomquist shirts. Like, it doesn't matter where you go. If you are at a dirt track, there is a Scott Bloomquist fan there. Yeah. The final guest for this season is somebody that I don't think we'd ever have on this show, to be honest with you. You know, it's not somebody. He hasn't sort of been in the news very much over the past couple of years, but he had a massive influence and impact on the sport.

There was a lot of good and a lot of rough, bad times that he was either influencing or had a part in. And so we're going to, we're lucky, I think, in a sense, to be able to have him come on the show, especially to be able to finish the year like this, but Brian France is going to come on our show and talk to us about not only what he's been doing lately, but really my interest in having Brian on the show is I need to know what he felt like his childhood was like. I know Bill France Jr. was at the racetrack, and I'd been around their family some,

enough to sort of form my own opinion. What type of childhood did he have in terms of feeling appreciated and valued? when he moves into the, you know, he comes through NASCAR, I think in a similar way that Ben Kennedy does, where he gets multiple jobs at different places and different spaces. We won't really dive deep into that, but I kind of want to know, you know, was he thrust into the leadership role prematurely? You know, he was young, his dad's going through some medical issues and physical issues, and I thought that it would go to Jim, who, Jim, who runs,

basically runs the deal now, Jim France. It didn't. 20 years later it does, but in that moment, it goes to Brian. And now Brian's leading the whole thing. And I want to talk about what he feels like he did good for the sport. There was a TV contract negotiated with his fingerprints on it. There was the COT and a bunch of other changes. We're going to try to go through all of them.

But there was also some rumors, speculation, some suspect behavior. all types of things that I think we would love to have answers on. And then obviously, you know, his exit from the sport, the legal issues that he had and how transparent he might be about that. We're going to ask him and see where we can go with it. And then, you know, what is he doing now? Does he watch it? Does he follow it? Does he have any influence on it? I know personally that he still has a great connection with his family. he still communicates with them regularly. I don't know what that means in terms of what influence he might have in the sport still today, if any.

But we'd like to know. I know that he's got other business ventures that he will share with us. But anyhow, and I mean, you know, I don't know if he listens to the show, if he does. Did he listen to the Mayfield episode? What was his opinion about that? Because his name came up multiple times. Right. You know, we can finally ask him, hey, was it ever personal?

Did you ever let it get personal? right when you're trying to make decisions from the very top of the sport you obviously can't let your heart and your emotions be involved but did it go to that point at some time right wouldn't you want to ask him that mike yeah so you bring up mayfield i mean mayfield hasn't been the only one that's brought his name up in interviews this year so for somebody that has not been in the news he has come up so that would say he is still very relevant to to to things that we deal with today wow You're telling us that we're going to have Scott Blumquist and Brian France to end out the year. If I was getting nervous on what to ask Scott Blumquist, now I'm even Dougley is nervous about what we ask about to Brian France. But that'll be a great opportunity for us to really kind of clear the air. And I hope he comes out of this feeling like he was able to set the record straight. If that's what he feels like he needs to do, there's certainly possible that we have some things wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he needs the opportunity to clarify things. And like the Mayfield episode, then we can determine, and the listener can determine who they want to believe if there's a conflict there. Yeah. I think that that's something that I'm going to try to do when he walks into the room. I want to give him the opportunity to tell us what he thinks he did good, right? And I think that there are some things that he influenced that were good around the sport. We all want to say that, you know, there's a general opinion that's not positive about, you know, when you think or talk about Brian.

NASCAR generally gets a bad rap across the board, have for, you know, have for decades. But they get a lot of criticism that actually belongs in other areas or belongs on the shoulders of other people not involved in NASCAR. I think Brian took a lot of heat for some things that maybe weren't necessarily his doing, but there were some things that I think that that absolutely were his responsibility, right? We talk about, hey, man, well, you weren't the one that made that choice, but you were at the top of it when it happened, right? And so somewhere along the line, you bear some responsibility. Or he didn't help himself from a public perception standpoint to go set the record straight.

I mean, if we're all to rely on rumors and you don't really go clarify, things or at least set the record straight. Rumors are all we got. Yeah. It's just going to be interesting. I've never really sat down and had a long conversation with him. I don't know exactly how comfortable or open he's going to be with us. But maybe he's in a place where he feels like he can shed some light on some rumors and some questions or answer some questions that are out there.

I wonder what he'll say about the COT. You know, we, you know, across the board, generally, drivers, crew chiefs, fans all feel like that that was a massive missed opportunity, mistake, should have never happened kind of thing. The car served us in no, it served us in very little ways in terms of trying to be safer and whatnot. You know, they made the greenhouse bigger. We won't really get into all that right here. But I look at it with disdain and nothing about that part of my career was good. and I wonder how he'll feel about that because that was a massive thing happening

under his watch. But again, you know, the TV deal was a great thing. TV deal. He was the one that came up with the idea for a chase for a championship, the whole playoff-type format. Now, it has changed, you know, even since he did that.

But I remember that with NextTale as the sponsor of the sport, you know, all of a sudden you had this 10-race, 10-driver playoff. Now, you know, and we'll ask him, I think, you know, that's a great example of something that you would love to say, man, you came up, not that you just said this, Mike, but, you know, a lot of people would sit him in a chair and go, you did that. What do you have to say about that? But I know that networks series sponsors all came and said, your sport doesn't have. a playoff atmosphere. Your sport doesn't have a championship moment. Fix it. If you want it, if you want us involved and you want this money continue to grow, I'll write you a billion

dollar check instead of a $500 million check. If you give me a playoff scenario, okay. If you're the CEO of that series, you're going to make those changes. Get the billion dollar check. Damn right. You're going to sit in a room long enough to where you love that idea. Sure. Right? And, you know, you might walk into that room initially going, I don't like this. I don't feel like this is what we need to do. I'm a traditionalist. I love what we've been doing. And sit there long enough for hours on end going over scenarios and situations that are work. And by the end of it, walk out of there and go, I think I can live with this. Or I think this is a good proposal.

And convince yourself that it's good, right? I can see that scenario playing out for Brian and a lot of people in NASCAR in certain situations. but we'll see, man. We'll see exactly what he's got to tell us. That'll be interesting. Well, Scott Blumquist and Brian France to finish out the year. Look forward to that, everybody. All right.

It's time for Ask Junior. And, of course, we got a ton of questions on social media in regards to the Ty Gibbs-Rosh Chastain thing. But we already covered that with Steve LaTart. So we've got some other questions that were submitted via social media. All right, let's get to it. Ask Junior is one of our favorite part. of the show where we get to

talk to the fans and the fans send in some great questions to Xfinity Racing on Twitter. It's been good all year to have their support, Mike. You know, Xfinity's been a massive part of the industry in many, many ways

supporting, obviously, the Xfinity series, but they do a lot more than that for NASCAR, and their involvement is really critical, actually. But they're very supportive of us, what we do here at Dirtymo Media. So we want to say thanks to them.

In case we don't get it in in the final couple episodes, we want to make sure they know we appreciate them for everything they've done for us all year. But let's get right to these questions. So this one comes from J.L. Armendarres. It says, Dale, should owners have more say in NASCAR? It seems like a lot of times NASCAR makes a decision

and then owners are just forced to play along. Is the person asking me if owners should have more say? Yeah. Well, they are, they have the RTA. Yeah. You know, the, you know, NASCAR's NASCAR. They're, they're the ones talking to the networks. The network, so basically the balance of power, in my opinion, is probably the networks at the top, NASCAR, and then owners, drivers,

somewhere near the bottom. NASCAR, you know, the, the teams gain some leverage and power by, you know, coming together and forming the RTA, which is the race team. Alliance. They gained the ability and the leverage to ask NASCAR to form a charter system so that now they have true value in their teams. If you wanted to sell a race team before the charter system, all you had to sell was the assets, the physical assets, the building and the parts and pieces, which you were going to sell pennies on the dollar.

Now you have a charter that's this invisible, non-tangible thing that's worth $13 to $30 million, depending on who you ask. Um, that is, uh, you know, that's created a lot of power and leverage for the teams. They, they kind of control the drivers in a sense. So, uh, you know, where NASCAR doesn't have quite as much leverage on the drivers, uh, NASCAR, uh, the teams sort of have, have that in their pocket as well. But still, they don't wield quite as much power, I think, as NASCAR. And I don't need, I don't, I don't know that I need the teams to have more power.

or equal power to NASCAR. You want the organization, the body to be the ruler, the one making the final decisions, the final say. You want them to have the power to make decisions and set rules and be able to move on, right? And I think as power equals, process slows down, decisions slow down. Things don't get figured out and choices don't get made to allow us to move forward when there's absolute power and leadership by NASCAR,

and specifically when there's absolute power and leadership by one individual in NASCAR, that's when things, in my opinion, have been the best. That person was going to tell you how it was going to go. If there was a dispute or a disagreement, that person could come in and settle the score and set things straight with a comment, and that was the end of the discussion. things are better when you've got somebody in the room that can say this is what we're doing all right end of the story and that's the way i think it needs to stay all righty this next one comes from joey it says dale will you go trick or treating tonight

if so do you make a costume that conceals your identity so you don't get recognized i don't care about that i i think that um i probably did that when i was much much younger wearing masks or whatever to make it to where I wasn't so recognizable. Yes, I might have did that around 2004. But at this particular time in my life, it's all about making sure that our little kids and all the kids in the group have a great time. They feel like that the parents are into it. And so I will dress up.

Amy has a plan. And I will, I've got my costume. I'm ready to rock. Amy will be sharing that on her social media and all that. And my focus mainly is to make sure I'm there for the pictures and making sure that our girls have a safe experience and that they see us engaged in what they're doing, walking up to the door, talking them through the experience.

You know, we've got a two-year-old, and she's going to be going. wondering what we're doing. What's how? Why are we at this house? I don't recognize this house. Who's this person? What are they offering this bowl of candy?

You know, so you just got to be there in the moment, sort of spelling out how this is happening and trick or treat and all that good stuff. Now, Ilo, her sister will be helping along with that. But I like to watch them, smile, laugh, talk to the homeowner and whatnot. not. So I like to be all in it. Are the girls at the age where they like to pick their own Halloween costumes? No. So it's a family themed costume? So yes, this will be this year's family themed.

That's up to Amy whether they can pick their own or not. And when that happens, I'm sure Isla is almost at that point to where she's going to be like, no, mom, I really want to be this. And Amy's going to let her. But for whatever reason this year, Amy had a plan that, we're all in this, you know, in this theme. Got it. Yeah. All right.

This next one comes from Sophia. It says you mentioned on the broadcast that you and Truex rode together to Martinsville. Who drove? And how would you rate Truex as a road trip buddy? I drove. Truex is going hunting. So he wanted to drop his car off the airport. So I picked him up the airport and drove him.

I was his car service to the extent. I drove him to the racetrack and dropped him off. We chit-chat it a little bit, small talk early on, but most of, you know, True X is quiet, so I make it a competition of who can be the quietest if I can out-quiet, true X, right? And so you ride along until he becomes so uncomfortable, he finally says something, which only happened once or twice in a span of about an hour and 20 minutes. I know you at your peak and him and his peak, that's a heck of a grudge match right there on who can be the quietest, because I think both of you can bring something to the table there.

In years past, man, when I would ride around with True X, I was in my mind rummaging through the filing cabinet of things just talk about. And, you know, like, yeah, you know what I mean? You got somebody sitting there not talking, don't talk. And so you're trying to, hey, man, how's the Eagles doing this year? You know, and you're just kind of thinking of the things to say. Things you don't care one bit about. No, but you're just trying to get this damn guy to open up.

a little bit. Come out of his shell, stop being so damn moody. But on this trip, or maybe I've just gotten to the age where I'm like, all right, you sucker, I'm all right, we'll try to out, quiet you and make it so damn uncomfortable that you've got to be rummaging through the file cabinet thinking of things to talk about. It's so true. I can hear it. Yeah. The cringe. I know, right? That's so cringy. Do you leave it silent or do you put music on when he's not talking? Yeah, and then what kind of music? Like, what do you like? I play what I want. I'm driving. I'm Driver gets to pick. I play what I won't.

I played at Pop Punk and all that stuff. Dangerous Summer. And he's going to like it. He's not going to say anything. If he don't like it, he's got to speak up. He's going to have to talk. He's going to have to talk. All right, we've got a couple more here.

This one is in regards to our good friend Parker Kligerman, finally securing a full-time Xfinity ride 48 next year for Big Machine. And how exciting that is for Bull. with a teammate, but also to see the grind that he's had to go through. You know, for a team like that that's on the cusp of really breaking through and trying to get better, hiring a young, inexperienced guy probably isn't the best thing. Parker can come in there with his understanding and ability and his knowledge and history and help them understand where they're weak, help them get their cars better.

Parker always drives cars above their, their real. potential. There's only a few guys that can really actually take a car and get a little more out of it than the car is capable of. And he's a great road course racer, which they run many of road courses in the summer. And so

he races great on the Super Speedways, has a truck win at Talladega, I believe. And so he's a great all-around talent that for whatever reason hasn't really gotten the break that would get him through. and if they can, if Scott and the 48 car can invest in Parker,

I believe that that's going to pay off big time. If they would give Parker two solid years, they won't want to let him go. At the end of that second year, they're going to want him to stay. It's going to take some time, and it's going to, it might happen overnight. It might take a little while, but they'll get better. And eventually, they'll be in Victory Lane, and Parker will be the car. the driver of the car when that happens. All right.

Last question here. And we had a couple people actually kind of submit this question on Twitter. It says, Dale, what was your reaction to the video of what appears to be Austin Hill punching Miet Snyder after the Xfinity race on Saturday? He straight clocked him. Yeah. So I saw the first video of them picking Mide up.

And I'm going to tell you, having been through concussions, having watched enough boxing matches, having experienced all of those things, I absolutely could tell that my didn't look like he had his legs about him when he first initially got up off the ground. He was kind of, he looked a little shocked

about what might have just happened to him. Of course, at this point, at this point, I don't know that he's been punched. I'm just looking at this look on his face and he had rubber legs. No question. So we move, on through the next 24 hours come to the racetrack on Sunday and our tape room has some

video of the punch we go and watch it I was floored by the um the veracity of it yeah and that I was impressed you know by the by the physicality of it and the punch itself I mean it's a hell of a punch hell of a throw apparently Austin Healed works out a little bit does some MMA fighting during the week just as a training tool. Knows how to fight, knows how to throw a punch. He knows how to throw a punch. All right, so check this, write this in the notes, we don't mess with Austin Hill.

Right. I knew that just on the size alone. I started replaying his interview in my head where Austin Hill says, hey, I told him to walk away twice. So in his post-race interview, they go, what was the deal with Mike Snyder? He said, well, he came down. here to run his mouth and I told him twice he needs to leave.

He didn't leave. And he didn't leave and then he said something I didn't like. And so I made a few phone calls and apparently what May it said was nothing more than, you know, you think you're a big shot because you race for RCRs, some, you know, some sort of, you know, normal smack talk. Nothing personal, nothing about his family or anything. that would really warrant the reaction we saw. Right. I bet you can't throw a punch. You know, he didn't say nothing like that, debate that, right?

He just said, yeah. So gathering the hearsay, I don't have facts. I don't know what's true and what ain't. I don't know. I wasn't standing there. I ain't got a recording of the conversation. But gathering all the hearsay and the video, I would say that if you go down to another man's car,

you better, if you go down to another man's car, go into Victory Lane, go into another person's garage, truck hauler, whatever. Whatever happens is partly your responsibility. You're putting yourself in that situation. All right. And I know that Mayett probably isn't going to press charges or, you know, May it's going to, you know, accept whatever the outcome is, I would assume. But Mayotte carries a little responsibility for putting himself

in that situation. But Austin, I feel like, will more than likely get some sort of penalty or some sort of suspension because it's assault. It's too much. We can't have guys swinging hard on each other like that. What if he had to knock Ma'i it out and Maia hit his head on the concrete? Then what kind of problem we got? Yeah.

We got a real issue there. You're going to jail. That's going to be cops. Yeah. That's going to be a massive problem that's going to be out of NASCAR's hands. And to say, I guess, Austin Hill from himself, NASCAR is going to step in, make sure that he gets the message that he can't do that. He can't do it on pit road.

You won't knock somebody's block off. You might as well try to see if you can convince them to leave the property. All right. Now, if you still won't it that bad, get him to get you down at the gas station or something. The Applebee's. The Applebee's, right. Who was that? That was my Carmen.

My Carmen. Right, right, right. But on Pit Road, in the garage, it can't happen. As impressive as it was. God, it was a monster hit, boy. It can't happen. You know, I don't want to hear all the bitching and complaining when NASCAR does something to Austin Hill. Because that's, it's warranted.

That's coming. Yeah. Yeah. But I will say, ain't nobody going to mess with Austin Hill no more. No. Nope. Boy, he threw a punch. And he didn't hesitate to throw it.

Knocked him out of the frame. And then jumped on top of him. That's true. That's right. You couldn't see that. But that used to be like a TRD thing. Like I remember for a while, TRD had like all of their like development guys.

Yeah. In like MMA for motor skills and that kind of stuff. And I think Austin's just like stuck with it and does all the MMA stuff. I remember when Noah and Burton were swinging on each other. Yeah, because Burton was doing the MMA stuff. Both of them went into, like, training case it escalated. They wanted to be ready. Burton was Austin Hill's sparring partner, he told me.

Okay. And that seems scary for him. Yeah. He said it was crazy. Yeah. That's fight or flight. Yeah, exactly. He's like Iowa farm big.

I mean, like, he's big. Yeah, country strong. Yeah, country strong. That's right. Yeah. Well, you know, I think my ought to be a little smarter than did go down there and try to have that conversation. You know,

Austin Hill has a very bright future. He won't really probably serve any repercussions in his camp. RCR probably, probably as impressed as we are by that little activity there. From the top down there, impressed, right? Yeah, that's right in their wheelhouse. It's just to might as well whoop somebody's ass

rather than have a conversation. All right. You know, so I can, I can see him feeling maybe a little, I can see him being well supported on his end of the deal, but I think that they are, he certainly hopefully needs to try to check it a little bit next time. Gosh, you know, maybe just punch him and not, you know, not jump on top of him.

But, you know, maybe don't use all the force, right? I mean, you're, you're almost 25% larger than the man you're hitting. I was curious, Marty was there, right? Yes. Like, as a parent, I thought about this. As a parent, what do you do in that situation? I know there's already like conflict of interest, not conflict of interest, but, you know, you've got to be professional on your job, but you also got your kid out there racing.

I know Jeff Burton has a deal with this. You do from an ownership standpoint. Like, that's always there. But what about when your kid gets absolutely clocked? Like, how do you manage that and stay professional? That is what I wonder. That would have been really hard. You know, you want to go over there and, you know, pick your own fight with Austin Hill, I imagine, but you can't do that, right?

You can't have that. Look at your dad fighting your fights for you. You know, I think that Marty removed himself from the conversation during the pre-race show when Dale Jarrett and Kyle Petty took over the pit box. that moment and brought us back from commercial teed up the conversation we all talked about it all that was without marty and uh you know he either requested that or that was good in you know good foresight on NBC's part to do that but um I don't know what you do what do as a parent like what I think about these things I watch my daughter play soccer and they get very physical out there I watch it and I've asked myself like you know what happens when when somebody throws a punch yeah I've seen

it happened and you go to youtube you can find this all the time you know it kids literally league games or you know soccer you know two girls just absolutely you know pulling hair and going after it like what am i going to do if that ever happens to my daughter it is it's a very man it's a problematic difficult thing to even yeah play out in your head because it's like you know and that's what i thought about when what does marty do forget what is he do in the moment marty's not going to go there to pick a fight with austin hill he's not that's not the kind of guys But just to have to watch your kid deal with this type of life incident.

What is it going to do to help my understand how to move forward with confidence? Because, you know, your kids are going to, listen, your kids are going to have struggles, they're going to have trials, they're going to have confrontations. Some of them may be physical, and you've got to let them learn and live

and become better people of it. And I'm sure that's easier said than done. This plays out in a big spotlight. and can have an effect long term on that person or that individual, something being so public. You know, Marty's going to have to interview Austin Hill, you know, at some point down the road. Think about that. Hopefully this weekend, man, that'd be awesome. So Austin.

Yeah. I mean, without that even coming up, it's in their head. Man. God, yeah. All right, Hannah. That's it. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, everybody watching this on our YouTube page. Make sure you click that subscribe button now. before we hit the road, we want to make sure we say thank you again to Xfinity. They're proud premier partner of NASCAR. They are a great supporter of Dirty Mo Media and everything we do here at the Dale Jr. Download. So thank you, Exfinity.

We'll see you next week. All right, everybody. Appreciate you guys listening to Dirty Air. A lot of great announcements there, some great conversation. And I hope you've listened to our preview of the, basically our preview of the Xfinity series and Cup series, race weekend coming up at Phoenix. We're also talking with Steve LaTart about Martinsville and everything

we experienced there. Go listen to that. Until next week, we've got some awesome guests coming, so I hope you guys are going to tune in. We're going to finish strong this year. Check out Dirtymo Media. On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.