The Dale Jr. Download - 407 - DIRTY AIR - Where To Go From Here? JRM Loses Championship; JGR Loses So Much More

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

After the conclusion of the NASCAR racing season, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis are once again in the Bojangles Studio for another edition of Dirty Air presented by Filter Time. Dale was fresh off his trip to Phoenix for NASCAR’s Championship weekend, and there was plenty to unpack. JR Motorsports came up short in its bid for the Xfinity Championship against Ty Gibbs and the Joe Gibbs Racing organization, and Dale shares his insights of what unfolded in the race and what could have played out differently.The racing world was rocked Sunday morning by the sudden passing of Ty’s father Coy Gibbs. Dale and Mike discuss the recent perception of Ty due to his on-track incident at Martinsville, and speculate how the racing world will surround Ty in his moment of need. With his future career being one of the most discussed topics in NASCAR, it is hard to imagine how he is dealing with so many life-changing moments at once. The NBC broadcast crew was also thrown for a loop when Steve Letarte had to have an emergency appendectomy after Saturday’s Xfinity race. Dale explains what was happening behind the scenes to aid Steve and his family, as well as what extra steps he had to take to prepare for Sunday’s Cup race one-man down. During #AskJr. presented by Xfinity, listeners sent in questions regarding Dale’s dream tracks for the final four NASCAR Playoffs races, his opinions on Ross Chastain and Chase Elliott’s dust-up during the Phoenix race, updates on his car restoration projects, the recent announcement that Pennsboro Speedway is being revived and his plans for the off-season. 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 Mo Media. Dirty Mo Media. I love a good party. I don't need a big reason to party. I want to play video games. I want to hang out my buddies, drink, raise hell. I know that night happened, but I don't remember. This is all pretty foggy.

I ain't feeling good. I mean, I'm feeling drunk still. It's like it's on a community. You're going to see some things. Okay. Yeah. It happened right in the street. Holy shit.

Like, I got a swollen head. Oh, no. And these guys are doing it. Jimmy's doing it, just doing it, and you're not doing it. The whole family reunion's drunk. I'm like in a ball of fire. Open up the refrigerator, took out a half a gallon of milk, and started peeing in it. You brought the kids to the pub.

Hey, everybody's Dale Jr. And we are back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download in the Bojangles studio with my co-host, Mike Davis. How's it going, Mike? It's going great. How are you doing? You're back from Phoenix. I know you're a lot more tired than I am.

I'm smoked, dude. I am. This weekend was something. You know, there's a lot of ups and downs. But for whatever reason, it felt like it was there two weeks. Well, I can understand that. And then also, and I don't know if this is where we want to get into this, but I saw that we sent Steve LaTart from the guest chair to the Xfinity Ray

straight to the hospital bed for an appendectomy. Did that throw you off? What does that do for a cup broadcast? Well, let's talk about it in some dirty air. All right. Dirty air presented by Filtertime.com. Filter Time is a subscription business for your air filters for your home. Your HVAC needs new filters probably every three to six months.

Go to filtertime.com, sign up. I will mail them to you so you don't forget to change them. Cancel any time, no contract. Anyways, so this weekend, the final, you know, championship weekend for all of the series, the trucks, Sixthinity and Cup. And I thought it was kind of funny, man. You know, when we did a recap last week with LaTart, we spoke nothing of. of the truck series. Did you recognize that?

Not until afterwards. Not until I listened to it. No, absolutely not. No, no. We could have talked about it on you. Well, you can. I saw no criticism, so we're safe. No, we didn't get criticized. You're right. So, I mean. But I felt like we missed a, we missed a base. When we hit the home run and jog the bases, we skip the base. Nobody, nobody pointed that out. Well, had we done it, I was prepared to pick Zane Smith going away like that was going to be the pick. Would I have been right? I was pulling for Zane because he's drove for us before. That's right. Good dude.

I want him to make it all the way to the Cup Series because I think he's good enough. Yeah. And he's nice. Yeah, he's nice. I don't like jerks making it all the way up there. No, no, no. All right, so I hope y'all appreciated that show.

I certainly did, and I thought Steve was amazing. I usually don't absorb a ton of our content. After we're done a show, I watch some of the videos when I see him come across my social media or when I see Durdimau Media Post, but I really enjoyed while we're watching all that back because Steve is so, so good,

and he did us solid by coming in here and giving us some great content. But anyways, Phoenix was a long one. Went out there Wednesday. We did some media, which was pretty fun, interesting, be able to talk to the drivers away from the racetrack. And we stayed at the wigwam.

You ever stayed at the wigwam? Yes. Really? Yeah. When? I mean, years ago. I haven't traveled to Phoenix in a while, but yeah, wigwams where it's at.

That is an amazing. place to stay. Yeah. What? Is it not? Did you have a bad experience? Listen, man, the wigwam is amazing. Yeah. Lobby restaurants, the swimming pool, I guess there's some golfing. Everything about it is great. I mean, everything about that, everything outside of the room makes me want to come back again and again. You actually talked about this at length last year when you stayed at the wigwam. You actually wanted to make, you were inspired to, you know, maybe even do a short film or a Western or something. I don't know what it was. The rooms are dated and I mean I'm not one to really complain but and this is a wide this is a widespread opinion that the rooms in the wigwam

I feel are the same have been the same since maybe the late 70s. You don't remember that about the wigwam when you stayed there? No I didn't even know you were prepared to vent about this To be honest with you... Well, we haven't had a conversation, so you don't know what's coming. No, I don't. You're right. So I'm trying to recalibrate my brain here going... I've never heard of anybody complain about the wigger on, frankly.

I have one small example. All right. Now, the bathroom was nice, shower, updated, good tile, all that good stuff. The carpet was original. Updated bed. I mean, I'm trying to spell it out here, so everybody kind of walks in the room with me. I went over to the back sliding, last door. I'm on the bottom floor. And I was just checking the security of this door, right? Is there a

dead boat? It was a double latch or what, right? Got one of those wood sticks sitting there keeping it from over? That's right. So the wood stick and the track, right, on the inside. Well, that would work, not on this door. Why not? Because the sliding mechanism where the door with the handle is on the outside track. That's funny. Look at his face. So. I wish you. I was everybody could just see his face right now. I go over there to... This would have ended his weekend right here. I guarantee it.

I go over there to secure the barrier, secure all the access points in this area. Right? I'm trying to make sure my room is good and secure. I recognize, man. All right. The actual sliding glass door is mounted backwards where the handle and the locking mechanism is on the outside track. And so you cannot put that rod or whatever on the inside track to stop the door from

sliding open. That's a great way to sort of secure that door. Well, you can't do it with this door. And on top of that, I could flex the door enough to get my hand in between the two sliding glass panes. So I could be inside and outside the room in the exact same damn time. And so on top of that, the latch on the sliding glass door was a little tiny lever, like your finger just locked, unlocked you could have picked that thing I could have put a yardstick in between the doors the sliding glass doors

trip that little latch been in there in two seconds no problem not a problem maybe that's how you book your room next year and the back sliding glass door was up against the so it's a big resort but it's a perfect square almost

well my back sliding glass door was up against the the property line. Oh, so, hop over the fence, come right on in, man.

Yeah. Take what you want. Yeah. So I had to get the ironing board out of the closet and kind of put it in a position

to where at least when that door came open, it would make a racket and give me a little bit of a head start. Oh, there's nothing that's going to make more racket than an ironing board.

That's right. That's a fact. Just, yeah, yeah. But you were just trying to get an alert system going. You weren't exactly thinking that was going to be Fort Knox all of a sudden.

I invested about 20 minutes into trying to figure out a secure method of locking this door or figuring out what I could be done. Couldn't figure out anything. So I said, we're just going to make sure it makes a lot of racket if it's to open. We would be ready. Did you go complain to somebody?

Hell no. No. I just wait until we come on the podcast to do all my complaining. That's right. That's right. At this point, you know, if I'm going to wait until we get on the show and complain about this, it is not a big deal. I slept every night just fine,

but I thought you'd find that pretty amusing. Oh, yeah, I love it. So anyways, I'm, and honestly, man, I am torn whether to stay at the wigwam next year or not. I stayed on the second floor one time. That way, you know, that, you know, that backwards mounted sliding glass door ain't a big deal on the second floor. That's right. But unless they're coming from the top, if they scale the roof.

I don't know, man. Everything else about is awesome. great restaurants we ate there. I ate there a couple times. I don't want a big one to be upset. We go to the racetrack, watch some practice on Friday. That was nice. We really don't have practice a lot this year, 20 minutes.

You can't really tell shit. So I had 60 minutes of practice for Xfinity and Cup. I had to be able to watch who was fast. You know, obviously watching our guys wasn't real thrill with the speed. The 54 of Ty Gibbs was super quick. So I knew right away on Friday that, If he gets the lead and gets clear, you know, gets a couple car links, he's gone. And that's the way the race played out.

We threw everything at him, and he overcame him, man. He did, you know, he race clean, race smart. I think people took my comments about, you know, not wrecking him. It was, okay, I won't assume anything about what people thought. Here's the way I felt about it. I would have not cared one bit if they would adored the hell out of the 54, run him up to track, whatever. I just didn't want them to turn him backwards into the wall. Which is what everybody was looking for, including Steve LaTartre saying that he would have lost

faith in drivers if they didn't go prevent him from winning a championship, which means not doring him, but preventing him from actually being able to win that race. I didn't want them to back him into the fence or crash him. I damn sure wanted them to run him into the dirt or door him, which none of them really ever did. They ran, I mean, hell, our guys were running into each other. And that was frustrating because they'd race the, you know, they raced each other. That's the, I mean, it was inevitable, inevitable that our guys were going to race each other because the seven and the nine were nearly dead equal.

Yeah, they were. And so as the 54 is sneaking away, they're, you know, they're bouncing off each other a little bit. And I'm sitting there going, well, I mean, what are you going to do? Both of them want to win. Both of them have equal cars. They'd love to be racing that guy in front of them, but damn, they got to get by each other first. Right. Right.

They got to sort out that argument. So that was tough to watch Heartbreaking. I mean, gut punch at the end of the day to lose after having three guys in there. Josh's car wasn't good all weekend. Never really, you know,

never really had enough race car to get up there and do much. But I thought the 7 and 9 had they had the track position on the 54 late, they might have been able to do it. The 9 was definitely faster caught the 54.

Tie was getting loose. And, yeah, 5, 10 more laps we might have had a different outcome. I was going to ask you this. And listen, I very blatantly did not go try to find this out before now because I wanted to ask you a couple questions. These can be short answers. But one was, what happened with Algar?

When they came up on that final run, Algar was in second. Noah was back in eighth because of a bad pit stop. So let me first, I'll get to know in a second. Well, what happened with Justin Algar? Did his car just go, the handle just go away? So he had a little bit of an engine issue that we aren't real, sure about or I haven't heard more about but we we I was so he lost his gauges at the start of the race it was really cool temperature wise and cooling down quickly all the other guys were adding tape they could

see hey man I got 225 I can add a piece of tape get up to 235 tape on the grill is free speed free down force no question any chance you can add some tape you freaking add the tape so justin lost his gauges he don't know what the damn tire what the engine temperature is. And so he's actually, Jason Burnett's texting me going, well, what's everybody else's temperatures? And I'll base off of what you're telling me their temperatures are.

I'll just assume that's what ours are. We're all about the same starting to race as far as our tape configuration on the grill. Well, I kept pushing him and pushing him. I'm like, man, keep adding, keep adding. And we probably cooked the motor because it started smoking and under the last caution.

I think we heard his engine a little bit. traditionally for whatever reason it makes i don't know what the phenomenon is i've seen this out of other teams like penske and so forth our cars don't have short run speed we don't fire off like that 54 car does we can run with him at lap 10 we can even outrun him sometimes at lap 20 40 50 but in the first five laps the 54 was clearly two-tenths faster if not more and our cars just they're sliding around it's not It's just the drivers cannot get more out of the cars in lap 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And so in 5 laps, you've lost 30 quarters of a second, if not a second, to the leader who can go like hell on new tires. I don't know what that phenomenon is.

It's something universal in our company. We've dealt with it many, many times in the past. And so, you know, when we have a late caution or when we have it, you know, when there's any kind of caution and we put new tires on, we have to be careful and not lose a lot of ground. But there are times when that's completely the opposite. The car is fire off good, but it's rare for us when we're one of those. So I think that was a combination of things going on with Justin. He was heartbroken.

Obviously, like I say, everybody was very, very heartbroken over the results. Josh gets to go back and try again. Justin also gets to go back and try again, but this is the time that he's had to get out of the car and go, I'm going to try again. You know, and you keep trying and keep trying without results. It's tough to stay motivated at that age. So this will be an interesting offseason for Justin,

for us to try to rally him and get him geared back up to, because Noah gets to move on. Noah gets to move on to a cup deal. He's frustrated, sad he didn't finish it out, but he's got this cool thing in front of him that's exciting to distract his emotions, right? The other two don't have that. I mean, Josh, to a degree, has that, but Justin is going to turn around and go back and do the exact same thing again. And so imagine stacking this wall of bricks all year long to watch it fall down over and over and over.

How do you keep stacking that wall, right? And so we've got to convince him to do that. That's part of racing, part of being an owner, part of being a driver. It'll get done. But I hated that for him. Me too. At the end of the day, you know, you want all three of them to win it. But, boy, I was heartbroken for Justin probably the most.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you on that. So, okay. And then back to the race, then Noah has the bad pit stop. He comes out in eighth. He does that final restart in eighth. Did you think that he had enough to get up there to tie? And were you surprised like I was that he got to start?

second. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So when he got to second, he did chip away at the lead steel. I didn't know if he just used his car up or not. I couldn't tell. That's what happened? I don't know. He ran out of laps. You'd think he'd caught him though if he had a little bit more? Mike, he got closer and closer the last night left. Did you watch it? Yeah, I did. You were there and I figured you, and you were also on the pit box and you probably had a radio on. Yeah. You didn't have a radio on? Yeah. So you did, you, you heard what they were talking about? I mean, like, I'm not privy to any of that. I mean, I mean, there wasn't much conversation at the end. He's closing in, he's running him down,

and that's the end of the story. Okay. Well, all right. But I mean, it's almost like you, the hell with Noah, he ain't got to talk about him at all. I mean, he was there. He was heartbroken just like Justin. I don't know what you want me to add to the fact

that he fell short by a couple car links. Okay. It sucks. Yeah, all right. It's not a whole lot of fun to talk about. Okay. All right. So don't talk about it.

No, let's, I mean, I'm just being real with you. Noah got close. It's freaking pisses you off that he got that close. We would love to have had a couple more laps and we would have won the race. I mean, he was going to run it. As soon as he could get to him,

he's going to run in the back of him, knock him out of the groove, and go by. But we needed two more laps, maybe. I mean, he came back from, he ran him down from quite a ways back. It was 15 car links, And he got, man, last corner, he was about three carlinks away.

You still pissed off about the dang door at the wigwaw? I'm pissed about everything. I'm telling you, man, this weekend was heavy for some reason. Yeah, and it got heavier. Yeah. We get to the hotel after the Xfinity race on Saturday night. I didn't work at a booth. When I was going to my car, my rental car, after the race,

Steve's coming to get in his rental car, and he's like, man, I'm tapping out. I'm going home, going to bed. And he was by himself. We all usually travel together. He's not with Rick and Burton like usual. So, all right. So then I get with Rick and Burton in there like, man, he had to leave the booth multiple times. And he finally had to leave.

I think he didn't even finish the race. So, which is, I thought, okay, this is serious. We get to the hotel and we're going to grab a bite to eat. So I'm sitting with Burton and Rick. And they're like, oh, he's going to the hospital. They're taking him to the hospital. He's in pain. He's grown in the morning.

So they take him to the hospital and very quickly evaluated him and decided he needed to have his appendix removed. And so now he's got to find a hospital that can do the surgery. So they're transferring him to another hospital. And so everybody's on the phone trying to extend his room because he's going to have to stay overnight. Everybody's on the phone trying to figure out a way to get his wife here because he wants her here. And so, you know, there was things. You know, he wanted, there was his golf and bag and all that. stuff that he wanted to go home.

So we, you know, we're, you know, a bunch of people were moving to organize that, right? And he's not going to work the next race. So now we, I got, I'm going to go back to the hotel room and rewatch the last race again. So I can start to understand fuel strategies and how they, you know, split the second stage and what, what lap did they all come in to pit on that on the third stage? And, you know, and calling, I called Greg. or Tex Greg Ives, and he basically gave me his whole strategy for the race, so I could say, okay, this is all what I need to be looking for is we're coming up on some of these milestones in the race,

help the fans understand when the guys might start coming to pit road and how the teams might use different strategies and how, there's a lot of great information that we got. But anyways, we're scrambling there before bed, and then we wake up in the morning to the news that Coy Giff, Gibbs passed away. The, you know, that knocked everybody down. You know, that everybody, everybody was floored by that news.

We had been, we, I don't know, you know, a lot of us had been really, really hard on Ty Gibbs over the week. And, oh, man, you know, there's this debate of, hey, man, if you're here and you're racing in this industry, you're a grown man. you can handle everything coming at you. If the media has got an opinion, you got to take it. You don't get a pass because you're 20, because you're 19, because you're 18, or whatever. If you're in the big boy league, you take it just like everybody else.

And so there was sort of this pretty unanimous sort of opinion about everything that was going on with Ty. And when we got to the media day on Wednesday, it continued. And about a couple hours into the media day, I was thinking, I kind of feel sorry for him. I think he genuinely, I think he's picking up on what we're all putting down. He's feeling the weight of an entire sport, basically, pressing him. Everywhere. So when we were in the media center, I'm sorry, in the media day, all the drivers have to go to all these little stations to answer, talk to print, talk to all these affiliates, and then they sit down with the booth guys.

I mean, they had a, I don't know, six hours of interview after interview, after interview, after interview, and Ty got asked the same questions over and over about the Martinsville race. He deserved a lot of criticism for everything that went down. We criticized him. But on Wednesday, it was like, enough's enough. It's time to, there's a moment when looking back is, you're, you know, you're done looking back, and it's time to look forward. It's time to move the storyline into the next weekend. And so then you wake up and you hear about his dad passing away and you're like, you know, I don't know. It was hard and it is, to be honest, screwed me up for the past 48 hours, just thinking about how similar we are in age.

That's a reality check for anybody that's around that, you know, 50 year mark. you know, where are we too hard on tie? Where is he today? What is he doing right this minute? Who's with him? How does he feel? It's just a, it was a really, really hard thing to believe was real. And so, and then you think about, you know, Joe and losing both sons and how he must be feeling. and I don't think anybody can there's not many people that can relate to to what he's dealing with so you know

those type of tragedies impact so many people throughout his family, his organization, everybody that was Koi's friend, anybody that knew him so it was just tough to understand you're sitting there it's championship day, Cup Series championship day and this this was part of the moment and part of the day and it was just i don't know that um

anybody knew what to think or say or feel we had to we had a show to do we had a race that was going to run you're you know i experienced this with my dad when he passed away the world keeps going um as hard as that is to understand and even as hard as that is to accept the moment somebody passes away, I mean, things will continue, life continues, responsibilities and requirements continue, races, everything in this world just has to keep moving along. And, well, you know, you mourn and you feel sad and you, you know, you go through that process as a relative losing somebody, but everything around you is still going like it was before.

That's really hard to make sense of. You want everybody to stop. You want everything to stop and wait for a minute, but it won't. And so, you know, that was the hard part, I think, for the, for at least a lot of the TV talent, some of these, some folks in our, in our, in our, in our, TV compound were close to coy. And so trying to manage those emotions, but also prepare yourself and be ready for live television.

Boy, that was interesting to see all that play out. The broadcast happens, right? And we go right into the race and we did all we did. You know, if you watched it, you saw it. I was really, really proud of the work we did without Steve. I had my phone open. We all did. We were all on his text chain, and Steve's just piping information to us, everything that he's seeing,

anything that he's thinking about, anything that's coming to his mind, he's sending it in that text message, and we would just, you know, it was a lot of the same things we were thinking about, but it was also helping us understand that we were on the right track. And so that was extremely helpful. It was hard for him to be in the hotel room and not be working and watching us work. It's like watching somebody drive your race car. Right. But when we got done with the broadcast, I was absolutely proud.

I felt like we covered it, the strategies, anything that was exciting, any racing, any scenarios going on. I felt like that when the nine spun across the nose of the one car on the restart, we covered that perfectly. Anything that we happened in that race, I thought we did a great job considering the fact that Steve wasn't there. And so at the end of the day, you know, Steve was, Steve had a plan. He's going to spend the night and Mr. Rick Hendrick was going to take him home in the morning with his wife. They have gotten home and he's comfortable at home. But I won't be playing golf for a while, which will suck for him because he loves to play golf and plays every day. But I'll tell you, man, yesterday sucked.

I sat around my house feeling like I had been. on the highs they're high and the lows are low, you know? Yeah. And so to ride that up and down from one extreme to another, now I can't imagine how that, you know, how Ty and his family feel, but I think for everybody in the industry, we all went through those ranges of emotions with them and with everything else going on

and anyone else dealing with anything, the wins, the champions, the losses, the defeat, Steve's situation was scary. And then the anxiety of doing live television. Yeah. All those things, man. Yesterday I was worthless. I would have assumed that all those emotions,

it made me, it really affected me emotionally on Sunday when I heard about Coy. And I didn't know Coy personally, but we've had Tye Gibbs on here. and I went through a lot of those same thoughts of like, man, what would I wish we had done differently now that we know? I went through all that. But for you, I was also, I'm like, man, you're going to have to compartmentalize all of this because you've got a broadcast to do. And so my assumption would have been that you're catching up, your Monday, your Tuesday,

you're catching up on some of the things that all of us were, you know, able to process a little bit quicker because we didn't have some big live broadcast to do. So I think you guys did handle it with grace and dignity and professionalism in a situation that I know was so difficult. Yeah. So difficult. So what Ty gives me, and I just worry about him, obviously, having lost his dad at such a young age, he's handling, you know, he's under such a focus right now because of his

own track, racing, incidents and so forth. in his season. He's a champion. There'll be, I assume, more news at some point about an announcement of his future next year, whether he's going to go cup racing or stay in the Xfinity series. So he has, I guess my point is, is he's got a lot on his plate, and he has this massive, you know, tragedy and loss. And so for me, I'm going to, I'm wiping the sleep. clean with tie. I'm going to give him all the grace I can I can imagine. I was given the same

sort of open canvas, you know, when I lost my dad. And so I don't, you know, I'm not going to worry about what he says, how he talks, words he uses, what he does on the track. How he grieves. Yeah, I'm going to let him let him do what he wants to do. I'm talking. for a while. You know, I'm not going to be critical and judgmental of anything going on with him. And I'm hoping, like I'm sure a lot of people are, that there'll be an opportunity to connect. You know, I think that one of the things that really, really helped me is Bobby Labani, Dale Jarrett, Mike Helton, so many people, obviously when you lose somebody, you're

family, your friends, all the people that you know and connect with and communicate with are there, they're there and supportive, they're there for a hug or a conversation or a cry or whatever it is. When guys that typically aren't in that circle reached out to me, that made the most difference to me, like to have Dale Jarrett come for me or Mark Martin or Bobby Labani, Mike Helton constantly asking if I was okay, asking me to accompany them to the racetrack or something, just to be around anybody, right? To be around those guys, especially that knew my father was so, so helpful.

And so, you know, I hope that I'm sure I don't question it. I know that, you know, Ty will have those people reaching out to him. you know, the industry is pretty incredible in these type of deals. I saw Jim France after the race Sunday, and that was the conversation we had. Jim France just watched Joe Lugano win the championship. He is at the very top of the mountain Jim is leading the sport. And out of the elevator, in the five minutes we were around each other to get to the rental car, we talked about putting, you know, the industry.

embracing Ty and trying to help him through that process. Listen, it really I'm glad to hear you say some of these things because listen, the thought did occur to me pretty quickly and I know you weren't going to like it

but of anybody on the planet that could understand what Ty was going through, having lost somebody in a very public way, when they're you know, having just come off of a performance and, you know, on this high of a mountain that they're on. It's you. And to be honest with you, Dale, I don't know if you've noticed, but in the past several weeks, we've had people sitting here at this table that have also dealt with some significant loss. Some of them, their dad, Eric Jones, Marcus, Ben Kennedy, and they're opening

up to you about this thing. And I just, I guess, I just say this. At some point, I think the industry obviously is always going to be their support of Ty. I just wouldn't be surprised if one day. Maybe it's years from now. Tye's going to do a lot like a lot of these other guys and that's that they're going to look at you as some, you're one of the, only of a few people that can relate to anything what they just went through. And so that doesn't mean that anybody else is less sincere about their, their compassion for his situation. But, you know, Eric Jones said it best, you're the only one that really can understand that. And, you know, I just, I hope and pray that this weekend at Phoenix for Ty Gibbs

that he looks back on it as a blessing and that the final hours with his dad was this enormous elation and not a curse where you can't ever go back and look at the Phoenix championship and think positive thoughts about it. I pray and that's something that'll manifest in time. No telling right now. But I just hope that that looks at that 24 hours, if you want to go out, you go out with your son,

having just won a championship and whatever celebratory type of things that they would have done, that's something to be positive about, and I hope that that's what happens with Ty. Yeah. So we should be live. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. for the Dell Jr. download,

and this is the Ask Junior segment of the show, brought to you by Xfinity. XFi is great, it's a great internet service that I am a customer and I use. I hear that they got this new thing, it's this white box, man, that gives you like a whole gig of speed or something. I don't know.

I get 200 up and down and maybe I need to up it up it. I've had it for several years, so maybe I need to upgrade. Can somebody help me here? And we're going to help you. I guess we need to make a call. Well, I don't know. I mean, I'll pay for it. I'm paying for the service now. No, you'll pay for it. Yeah.

When I hear somebody make a call, it's like sending in a favor kind of something that sounded like. Yeah, it did sound like that, but I know where your heart is. I keep seeing the average. I keep seeing the advertisement and they got this little tower and they're like up to a gig and I'm like I want that's freaking fast yeah awesome yeah so anyhow I'm looking into that yeah yeah here we are um post phoenix our uh you know we got what one more show left yeah one more show one more official show yeah yeah you know all we're wrapping this season up it's kind of sad you know no like to see it end

i'm ready for a break all right Hannah's got the questions you guys sent into Xfinity racing on Twitter. Let's get to them. All right, this first one here comes from Andy. With the season now ending, what would be your dream final four tracks to end the season? What? What? Final four tracks? Wait, don't they race

at one to the... Yeah, but isn't there like there's three in the last round? Yeah, and then one. So you want them four? Um, all right. I would say Northwiltzboro, Nashville Fairgrounds,

Martinsville and Bristol. Short tracks. I'm just kidding. I would say, you know, I love Martinsville being that final race. They need to fix the short track package, and I hope they do, and they talk about it. O'Donnell said they're going to work on it. But Martinsville or any short track, really, Bristol, no, not any. Martinsville or Bristol, being the cut race to the championship is good with me.

I thought Kansas put on some good racing this year. No, the Charlotte Oval put on a good race this year. Yeah. So I might think about one of them two. Maybe Daytona. Throwed Daytona into that. Chaos. Third round.

And then the championship race, to me, just should be going to different venues every couple of years. The reason why I say this is, I mean, I thought that was an exciting race. I know that if you, if that was, the March race at Phoenix, people would be more critical. I would probably be less satisfied. But being that there was a championship being decided,

that brought some interest into what was happening there. And so the racing, like the gap between this guy and that guy and the lack of side by side, there was some passing, but not a ton. The fact that there was a championship battle made that race a little more enjoyable. But the reason why I want the race to move is because it changes the playbook. It changes the – I went up to Josh Berry. He gets out of his car after the race on Saturday. And I said, hey, man, first I said, hey, are you hungry?

And he goes, no, I'm good. I'm like, no, no, for next year, you hungry to try to win a check. And he's like, yeah. I said, all right, let's stay hungry. This is offseason is going to be about getting better. And so I'm ready to start it right now. And he goes, all right. And so the other thing is, is like I said,

now that you've came here, when it ran a whole year and you've lost this race at Phoenix, now you know all these things that you would change to be better in this moment. You know all the things that you might have been done differently or done to prepare better. Now that you kind of look back and go, oh, I get it now. Okay.

And so you'll be in a better position when we get here next year because you're smarter and you realize some things that can change. That's why that that race can't stay there year after year after year after year because the teams know the playbook. That's right. And there are certain guys, like especially when we did Homestead that were just so dang good at Homestead. And like, Homestead's a tricky track.

Like, that's one that you've got to have the finesse for. And there's guys, you know, there's drivers that are great at all. There's the tracks will be good, you know, there's, tracks that everybody's good at. There's tracks that organizations are good at. But I think just kind of keeping it moving around every two or three years, like go to Phoenix for a couple years, go here for a couple years, go here for a couple years. And that keeps the teams, keeps things kind of fresh and shook up.

And they can't really establish like this perfect plan or perfect playbook of how to get to that end result. Whereas if we're at the same racetrack every single year, it just kind of becomes almost robotic. in a way how they get there. And we'll see a lot of the same guys at the same championship four every year, right? While we're still talking about on-track stuff, we had a couple different people actually tweet at us

with differing opinions in regards to the Chase v. Ross activity that took place. Of course, you involved in calling that replay. Do you have a stance on that? And if so, where do you stand? Oh, well, I thought that we called it really well from the booth. So there's this is really this is this really comes down to mentality and like so Ross is in position. He moves left and gets under the nine and he's underneath him, right?

And so if the nine comes down, every driver is probably going to do things a little differently. Ross is the type of guy that if he's got position and you try to block, he's holding a steering wheel straight and you're, you're spinning. Your fault. Okay. If the nine comes down on me, I probably would have jerked the wheel to the left and went even lower. There was a little bit of room down there that I would have probably tried to keep my momentum maybe going. If we make contact, that stops my momentum. And spinning him out, I lost a couple spots by the cars on the outside of me because it's going to slow me down as I turn him.

So I'm trying to keep go left so I can keep my momentum up. And eventually he's going to have to fade back right to make the corner. And so everybody would have done that differently. There's no right or wrong. I don't think Ross is wrong by holding the wheel straight and letting the nine spin himself out. And I think that it was obvious that there was, I think it was obvious that it wasn't like,

I think it was obviously not Ross's fault because Chase couldn't tell if he did anything wrong. If you've, you know, if you've got to say, Did I do something wrong there? Then obviously it'd be, it's not a clear cut. Ross screwed up or Ross was a bad guy. So, and then somebody, but somebody on social media did say, man, he really calls it all toward the Chevys.

If you watch, if you watch enough broadcast, you'll see Dale calls it for the Chevys. And I said, yeah, when it's Chevy on Chevy, I'm going to easily go for the Chevy. How dare you. Yeah. So that was an easy one for me. You'd call it for the show.

I had a little fun with that. But, you know, I think Ross has made, Ross is basically, I mean, that was a championship race too, so I can see where Ross would have more of a, oh man, you know, I'm not moving for you. I'm not going to, I'm not compromising for you here. In this situation, you've put me in a bad spot and I'm holding the wheel straight and so be it.

but I think Ross too has basically made it pretty clear, like in those type of moments, how he's going to react and how much he's willing or not willing to compromise for the drivers around him. I don't think he should have cut chase a break. He could have cut him a break. He could have chose to not turn him around. I don't think he had to, especially in the championship battle.

Yeah, I think a lot of people were anticipating when Ross came back around. I was. Everyone was holding their breath. Like I was holding my breath and I was like, all right, this could be a huge determining factor here. Yeah. And it was smooth because based on Chase's radio, I didn't know how that was going to go down. Yeah. So I felt like, too, that Chase was like, hey, did I do anything wrong there?

No, you didn't do anything wrong, but they wouldn't turn around and say Chase wrecked you. Yeah. Or I'm sorry, Ross Ross wrecked you. They wouldn't say something that wasn't true. They wouldn't, you know, nobody was. I think that would. Well, I mean, they didn't. I know.

No, I got you. I just don't think that's above them to say that. But no, I'm hearing you. I just thought that was telling. Like they said, you didn't do anything wrong. Yeah. And Chase really didn't do anything wrong. He just spun himself out.

But he didn't do anything egregious. But they wouldn't say, man, Ross wrecked you. Go get him. Because they knew that it wasn't true. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. By the way, Jamie McMurray was on Doorbock Clear this week. He said, he just doesn't think that.

Chase knew. He didn't know. They were actually talking about something that actually annoyed me the most, and that was the fact that Chase won't state his opinion to anybody after a race. He plays it very, very, you know, he's deliberately not answering the questions. And I wish Chase would just tell us what do you think about that situation. But Jamie McMurray said, I don't think he knew what happened. He goes, sometimes drivers just don't know what. if they were, until they've seen it or been able to go back and look at it.

He goes, maybe he was, he didn't know, maybe he doesn't know, you know, or maybe he is very mad and he just kind of conceals it, and then we have to suspect that he's pissed. I think that if they were going to another race the next weekend, he would have said more, but the fact that he was ending the year that he didn't want that to be the sound bite for the next several months. Not that we, you know, not the sound bite that we would use or whatever.

Yes, he'd probably hear it for a couple. but what's the last thing you're going to say to a microphone at the end of a year when you've lost a championship? Is it going to be complaints about Ross Chastain? Is that what you want to leave on the table? Is that the bookend that you want? And then therefore the first thing that they ask about in February, you're right. You're a good point. They didn't bother Jeff Gordon, by the way.

He had a lot to say about it. Anyways, carry on. Carry on. A couple of people chimed in saying they like your Bob Seneca shirt. Hey! eBay. This. And this one comes from all of our Facebook comments.

A lot of people saying, do you have any car restoration projects or updates that you want to share? Love hearing about the stuff that you do in your downtime. Yeah, just in here, just in the Xfinity shop here, back in the Fab room, is the 66 Nova Wagon. They're still working on some of the rust issues that that car had. And that's coming along well.

There's no, there's no, I wanted to get a plug-and-a-eplegged, play Chevrolet engine transmission drive train kit those are back ordered so I'm having to search other options and we're gonna we're gonna be fine there but I've got a I think it's a 78 or an 80 Chevy Blazer that is a project it's gonna need a work but I'm gonna tune on that here at some point I got a lot of odds and ends on the cars that actually drive. I got a burnt spot on my 77 C10, where the exhaust burnt some of the paint on the rear bed,

on the truck bed. A little stuff like that to clean up. Oh, I finished a, I put it on my social media on my Instagram, a 65 Impala. This Impala's been in my family since it was brand new. I've actually wrecked it and had to repair it. I mean, it's been through everything. It was a community car for a while,

had a lot of damage on all the corners. I got the car from dad, paid $2,000 for it probably around 1998, and put a stereo in it, fixed a bunch of the chrome, got the body cleaned up, cleaned up the engine bay and fixed it all up, took all the interior out, recarpeted the interior, repainted all the, I did a lot of the work. I had some help with some friends too, but I did a, I was pretty hands-on with this car. We put some new wheels on it that I'm real proud of and did some new inserts on the seats that I think look cool. I put a little video on my Instagram.

Anyways, I think that 66 wagon is kind of top of the list right now as far as focus on projects. I'm forgetting one, and I can't remember what it is. Good problem to have. In the chat, we had someone just pop up and I lost the name, but also on Twitter. remember one i'm sorry hannah um the the car that's on the road uh glory road at hall of fame the del earnhart 1980 championship monta carlo will be coming home soon and i don't have the drive train finished in that so i've got to get the motor and everything and that and kind of go back through the brakes and everything get it because i want to get it to where it drives and drive it around yeah

so that that's one thing that's happening um this one comes from at dirt fever it says what are your thoughts on the legendary Pensborough Speedway opening back up. Can't believe it. You know, we went out there and shot a lot of Speedway and it just was, you know, it looked far, far, far gone. And I cannot wait to watch the, you know, the progress as it gets sort of brought back to life. It's going to be so much fun seeing the before and after. I'll dig that kind of stuff.

Any kind of Instagram about like pictures from like New York. city or even downtown Morseville from like 80 years ago and today when they take the same perspective. Really, that is so cool to me. I love seeing stuff like that. So like urban growth and whatnot.

So seeing it change and how they document that will be a lot of fun and what they're going to do, you know, there's a creek that runs through that racetrack so there's a bridge on each end. They race across a bridge and turn one and two and across a bridge and three and four and there's going to need, they're

They'll need to do some work to those to get them to code and whatnot to be able to race. I'm surprised that they're taking this on because of the expense that's going to be expensive. We were talking about it over the weekend at World Finals, and I asked why, of all the places to build that racetrack, why right over top of the creek? Because, like, if you know where it's at, there are plenty of other places they could have put it. Sure. And it used to be a horse track.

I didn't know that. I didn't either. Which I don't know still why you'd put a horse track over a creek, but I feel like it might make a little more sense. But I guess it used to be a horse track is what I was originally told. All right. Last one here comes from Wayne. It says, do you have any big plans for the offseason?

Of course, projects aside. But do you have any big plans for the off season? Well, we'll go see Amy's family in Texas. That's probably the main thing that we got going on. Otherwise, I think I might go to Gatlinburg, go see our friends at High Rock. Sugarlands and check in with that family to see how things are going with that. We have Christmas parties here at work that will be important. Opportunities to get in front of all the employees and talk about the pride we have in this season,

but the excitement for 2023 and obviously bringing Brandon Jones into the fold and introducing him to the way we do things. It'll be a lot of fun over the off season. hopefully maybe get a hunt in or two. I'd love to go hunting. I haven't had a chance to go do that. But it's, yeah, that's about it. I mean, Daytona will be here for you know it. I'm going to go to the Xfinity race.

I don't think I've got plans to be at the 500, but I'm going to go to the Xfinity race and check all that out. I'll be in town for a couple days. Was that the question in the chat? You were about to say a question in the chat and then he remembered what his last project was. Oh, no, those were both in regards to Pensborough.

So it was the one guy that had someone had brought up Pensborough and then we have a question on here also from that. Just a lot of people looking it up. Yeah, if you've never seen Pennsboro, look it up on Google and the pictures of people just sitting on the hillside. Or watch Lost Speedways. Yeah, or Law Speedways. Yeah, so cool.

Perfect. Well, that is it for this week's As Junior. All right, you're on our YouTube page. Make sure you click to subscribe. Thank you, Exfendi, for everything you do. Xfinity's been a great partner for the podcast and DirtyMove Media. and we really appreciate them. One of the best companies, man,

when it comes to investing in this sport and moving things forward and doing a lot. You know, we have a lot of help at a lot of different levels in NASCAR and for them to support the Xfinity series and support our podcast. They make a big difference in some unique areas. So we appreciate them. Thank you guys for tuning in.

Hope you enjoyed this year. we've got another show left and and then we'll see what happens in this winter i always say that always say we're going to try to do some things or always try to get mike to do something for us crazy i always try to talk mike into going year round which is crazy but uh that is we now have what is it what's a dirty mo mo live right so while people are here right what that's right tell people what Dirty Mo Live is, Mike. I'm excited about this. Dirty Mo Live is our, I mean, listen, obviously it's a live stream broadcast, but it also is our very first that we do. This Ask Junior was the only live streaming we had done, but this is going to be a show that we can do as many times

a week as we want to, and it gives us now a chance to be able to react to news or react to anything without having to wait for our next scheduled podcast, right, which, you know, in the off season, that's one thing. But even, you know, for a week-to-week podcast schedule, for the download or door bumper clear. You know, sometimes you wait long enough to get, you know, lose relevance. Now we're not going to have that problem. I, we did our first broadcast last week and it was a huge success. We had like over 40,000 views on that.

And there was a lot of people, there was like 2,000 or 3,000 people in the thing at one time. A lot of fun. I want us to be able to engage with fans in real time. And yeah, we're looking forward to. We'll build that out. But I appreciate that coming up. Yeah. My favorite thing is I get a text from Mike at like 830.

What are you doing? I'm like right now or later and he's like, no, we're going to go live. I don't think you could have peed this up in a more creepy way than what you just did. I was like, okay, Mike, no bias. Got to work. Not how it happened. That's okay. Alex, Alex got to make his debut.

I was asking if she was available to get on Dirty Mo Live. I'm so glad I asked. Anyway, Dirtymore Live is going to be a lot of fun because, yeah, we can just jump down here and fire it up and go, right? That's right, and it'll be a revolving door of different content contributors. We're going to have somebody from Door Bumper Clear on this week.

You know, we'll mix and match, and it's not just going to be one person all the time. So we'll have fun. Have a great week out there, and Thanksgiving's coming around the corner, man, so you might want to save up. That's what I'm going to do. Save up what?

Calories? Yeah. Yeah, I got you. Save up for the big day. I got you. All right. All right, that wraps up, Dirty Air. Thank you, FilterTime.com, for supporting this segment of our show here on the Dale Jr. Download.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this season. Dirty Air will be back. Check out Dirtymo Media. On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.